With a bit of a bigger budget, I finally decided to try out some new stuff on this project.

For a while now I’ve wanted to find a different wood, something that’s not super common on YouTube, mostly because I think it’s interesting to expand my knowledge of woods. When I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and found someone selling Makore, I jumped on the opportunity to try working with this very interesting wood. From the little bit of research I did before buying, I found the colour very appealing and wasn’t too worried about how hard it would be to work with. As far as its workability, it really depended on the tool. On the bandsaw, I went through multiple blades whereas with the table saw or hand tools I didn’t have any issues. I still have to do a few more projects with this wood before I can claim to understand it, but I can easily say that I’m looking forward to working with it more often.

Then there’s stained glass, which is something I’ve wanted to be able to add to my projects for a long time now! The biggest hurdle though was that everything I’d been able to find about stained glass was that you had to work with lead, which is a non-starter for me. Luckily, my slightly obsessive nature kept me interested in pursuing stained glass work and I eventually found out about lead-free solder and zinc came. While still requiring basic safety precautions, both of those materials are much safer to use than lead. The only downside is that they’re much harder to work than lead. Lead came bends and shapes easily, where zinc does not. Lead solder flows better and at a lower temperature compared to the lead-free version. So if you want the easy route, you can work with lead, but I didn’t want to risk and it’s not like I’m afraid of a little hard work.

The results from the stained glass were acceptable, not great but also not bad, and I’m looking forward to getting more practice with it in most of my future projects.