Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301260392
SECTION: NEW RIVER VALLEY ECONOMY PAGE: 36 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE LENGTH: Long
FORMER ARSENAL EMPLOYEE HAS WORK CUT OUT
Lance Hudnall, laid off from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, didn't have to look far for a new job.He's already pulling part-time duty in Light Fantastic, the stained-glass business his wife, Janice, has run for seven years out of the couple's Hillsville home.
Hudnall, 41, a trainer at the Radford arsenal for six years, is among 730 Hercules Inc. workers laid off last Wednesday.
Now the 1973 Virginia Tech graduate and Lynchburg native is on the cutting edge of a new career, but he's already had some training.
"He watched me for four years while I did it as a hobby," Janice Hudnall said.
She learned the skill in 1980 at a class in Rome, N.Y., where she and her husband lived while he was in the Air Force.
When he left the service in 1985, they worked at it full time for about a year, before Lance Hudnall got a job at the arsenal in 1986.
Janice Hudnall said they made enough to get by that year. This time around, she and her husband hope it will go a bit more easily.
They have built a reputation as skilled craftspeople in an area where there's not much competition. Also, Janice still has her nearly full-time day job with the Wythe County Social Services Department.
In addition, the couple plan to involve their 14-year-old son, John, in the family business. The middle-schooler already has come up with a dinosaur design for a stained-glass night light.
"I tell Lance, `Our standard of living will go down, but our quality of life will go up,' " said Janice Hudnall, who grew up in the Hillsville area.
Both say the work is fun, which is more than some folks can say about their jobs.
"We have a good time with it, especially the design part," said Janice Hudnall. "We meet a lot of great people."
That's because they sell most of their wares at crafts shows around the region. "Our store moves around a lot," she quipped.
They've done all kinds of shows, from what Janice Hudnall calls "every wide-spot-in-the-road, hog-calling contest or tobacco-spitting festival" to major crafts shows.
Along the way, they've learned which shows to avoid and which to attend. Blacksburg's "Steppin' Out" festival remains on their list.
In December, they were in the Christmas rush, filling holiday orders. Laid out on their workshop table were glass pieces that would become an angel in a holiday scene.
"You get serious at Christmas," Janice said.
Even with Lance Hudnall aboard full time, they expect to continue their traveling road show. They also plan to pursue more mail-order business through magazines and catalogs.
Their repertoire includes stained-glass night lights (teddy bears, cats, dinosaurs, at about $10 each), exquisite table lamps and lamp shades (from $50 to $100) and intricate window panels ($150 and up).
Some special-order items can run as high as $600.
Though they shy away from church windows and other major pieces that might require scaffolding and tall ladders, they have tackled some tough jobs.
Among their more challenging pieces over the years was a 4-by-4 panel of Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
"It had about 800 different pieces of glass," Janice said.
They also did 39 windows for a house in Statesville, N.C. "That got into work," they both said.
Nature motifs - birds, butterflies, flowers - abound in their sample book, which is a photo album of past creations. These motifs sell well, and the Hudnalls like doing them.
Drawing on her professional art training, Janice, a 1974 Virginia Tech graduate, often develops her own designs, some of which she says she literally dreams up.
They've also had some unusual requests and commissions, once rendering into stained glass an idyllic scene of a nude woman standing in a stream.
Another time, Janice said, someone asked if they could do unclothed people in a more extreme setting - in chains.
"He never got back with me, which was OK, because I'd just as soon do flowers and birds," she said.
She said executing someone else's design can prove difficult.
"I guess the hardest part of this is if someone comes to you with an idea in their head, you have to get the idea out of their head onto your paper so that you can cut it into glass," Janice said.
That paper rendering, called a "cartoon" among stained-glass crafts makers, is used to pattern the actual pieces that make up the scene or design.
Then, in their basement workshop, the Hudnalls use the English method, placing the cartoon on a light box and then using a marker to carefully trace the individual pieces from the drawing onto glass.
They use a standard hand-held glass-cutting tool to score the individual pieces from a sheet of good-quality stock.
"It's got to be pretty precise," Janice explained, pointing out that even a minuscule error will be magnified once all the pieces are laid out.
The Hudnalls' workshop contains all manner and colors of glass, from large sheets stored in racks to small shards stuffed into one-gallon milk jugs. They buy a lot of their glass directly from a factory in West Virginia.
After cutting, the edges of each piece are ground smooth and, if necessary, shaped. Then, each edge is wrapped with copper foil, which provides a bonding surface for the solder that holds the whole thing together.
The Hudnalls use a temperature-controlled soldering iron at 700 degrees to tack the pieces together, and then to "lay a bead" of solder along both sides of each seam.
For safety's sake, they use a fume extractor to avoid inhaling vapors from the solder, which contains lead and tin.
Workshop safety is "sort of obvious," according to Janice. "Don't walk barefoot and stuff like that," she said. Even with due precautions, both say a few small injuries occur anyway.
"He bleeds and I burn," she said. Lance Hudnall jokes that he should own stock in the company that makes Band-Aids.
The Hudnalls say maintaining production at a good clip could spell the difference between success and failure now that they're going back to full-time operation.
Janice said they can assemble a small night light in as little as 20 minutes, once the pieces are cut. Their 3-by-4-foot Mabry Mill panel consumed about three months of design and shop time.
Both concede that, even when they meet the customer's expectations, they can't always recommend the results.
"We've made some mighty ugly stuff for people. If they'll buy it, we'll make it," Lance Hudnall said, only half-jokingly.
For their part, the Hudnalls are like the shoemaker's children who had no shoes. While they design and manufacture dozens of pieces each year, their home is devoid of stained glass.
Janice said that, among other things, they've been too busy with work and renovating the house to think about it.
Economically this year, the Hudnalls expect to get by on the strength of Light Fantastic, but within strict limits.
"Let's just say we're not going to be taking any trips to Bermuda," he said.