Making 'beach' glass

pretty much as long as people been using glass and boats some of the glass is broken and washed up on the beach and for about as long as glass has been washing up on the beach people will be collecting it just because it's pretty or to use in art and jewelry unfortunately for collectors and artists today we're using and breaking less glass there's less and less Beach glass out there so what do you do if you can't find the beach glass you want to use in your projects what do you do if you live a thousand miles from the nearest ocean well if you've got a couple of days and some fairly available tools you can make your own to make your own humble beach glass first collect glass then safely break the glass next wear down or abrade the glass then you can choose interesting pieces out of the load and use them for your project the nice thing about making your own Beach glass is that you have some freedom and control in terms of what kind of glass you end up with you can really use just about any kind of glass as long as it's not too thin remember that you're going to be braiding off some of the glass so if it's already as thin or thinner than you want that glass isn't going to work bottles come in a range of colors clear brown green are pretty easy to get I've also seen a fair amount of blue recently if you're looking for other colors you may need to be more creative if you look into some thrift store glassware or know someone who makes stained glass then you have a chance to get those really interesting colors that way the biggest thing is finding glass that can be something interesting when you're done keep your eye out for unusual colors and shapes but remember you might want to do a practice run before you use that really cool piece of glass you find usually breaking glass is easy but breaking glass safely and the way you want can be more challenging one of the biggest issues is controlling the bits of shrapnel that will want to fly everywhere it's a good idea to have a way to confine the glass and find a place to break your glass that's relatively easy to clean up somewhere kids and pets won't be playing that way we can keep glass fragments out of hands feet paws noses and mouths we also want to make sure you are safe safe shoes hand protection and eye protection are a must and preferably you'll wear long pants and long sleeves that will protect your skin from flying glass I usually make a point of washing my glass breaking clothes separately from other clothes just to help keep glass shards from getting anywhere I don't want them you want strong and heavy tools to break your glass just throwing a bottle into a bucket might break it but probably not as much as you want or in the way you want generally we want to work from large to small something big and heavy like a sledge hammer to do the initial breaking and then something smaller to customize and shape the glass if you got flint knapping tools and experience you can work fairly detailed and make some pretty cool pieces or you can just go for random breakage which is more accurate to real Beach glass if you've got the right tools you could use diamonds or silicon carbide blades to cut preformed shapes it's kind of cheating but it works okay now we're going to do the actual breaking go ahead and Chuck your glass into the bucket don't load it so full that things are going to be problematic or fly out but you want a fair amount of glass in that don't worry about it breaking on the way in if it breaks we want that to happen if it doesn't that's okay too because we're about to bring in a big persuader remember if you want more control over shape you're going to want to cut or bring in flint knapping tools later the hammer is going to do the hard work of our breaking and is really helpful for big things like wine bottle bottoms once you've worked the glass down with the big hammer you can choose pieces to refine with other tools if you want or just refine things down with the hammer the finer tools give control the big hammer makes random pieces that are more like natural Beach glass we want pieces that are just a little bigger than what we want in the finished piece our braiding we'll take the glass down the rest of the way we also want a mix of sizes and shapes some bigger stuff to add weight some smaller pieces that can get into crevices and details it matters in nature this is the step that takes the longest time we can do it much faster my personal preference for tumbling Beach glass is a three pound rotary tumbler with an older barrel that I've retired from rock tumbling the glass tends to chew up the barrel more than rock tumbling does and it's a good practice to separate operations into different barrels I would definitely avoid cross contaminating my metal cleaning and polishing barrels with glass work you could also use a vibratory tumbler but vibratory tumblers operate a little bit differently so if you do you'll need to adjust these instructions to fit your machine first we're going to load the barrel two-thirds to three-quarters of the way full with glass next we load in loose silicon carbide abrasive I use 80 grit or a 60 90 split grit for the purpose of making beach glass I wouldn't go finer than a hundred grit because we want fairly heavy abrasion for my tumbler I add four tablespoons of grit if you're using a different sized tumbler you want to adjust the amount up or down to fit your machine add water until it's almost to the top of the glass load then put on your lid assembly make sure it's good and tight when you're putting the barrel on the tumbler make sure the motor is running before you put the barrel on if you try to start the tumbler with the barrel already in place you're going to break a lot of belts the tumbler should run with this load for at least two days I usually check it after 2 but run it for 3 or 4 days until I get the level of abrasion I want ok your tumbler has run for 2 or 3 or 4 days you've tested a piece and it's about as abraded as you want it now it's time to empty our tumbler and find our goodies one of the biggest things when we're emptying the tumbler is that you never put the water and sludge from the tumbler down your pipes it's essentially cement and it will cause you problems this is why I always use a bucket if you have environmental restrictions on dumping water in your area you might want to check with the local government about how to dispose of the waste from a tumbler usually nothing in your tumbler is going to be really toxic at least not from a glass operation but it's still not something you want in your mouth or in your pipes you also want a way to separate the glass from the discharge a cheap strainer works just fine if you work with soft stone like turquoise or malachite you want a plastic one but the wire ones will work just fine for our glass pour your glass and your discharge into the strainer then go ahead and clean up your barrel even if you work with just one process per barrel you want to get the barrel fairly clean so you'll have a good seal for next time then go ahead and rinse through your glass after your glass is rinsed you want to move it to a sorting area this is what I use it's just an old cafeteria tray lined with paper towels I do it this way for easy cleanup wipe down the tray throw off paper towels and you're done this way I can work with a variety of grits and projects without having to worry about cross contamination be careful when you put the glass on the tray there's no point in breaking anything at this point we're going to sort the glass looking for two things broken pieces that need to be reprocessed and cool pieces that we'll use in making projects the remainder can be used for ornamental things or processed for other projects cut three broken root Umble whatever you feel like doing okay here are some interesting pieces that I'm going to use in future projects this video is being written and shot in conjunction with part one of a book that I'm writing on making a braided glass jewelry I'm planning on doing a follow-up video to show what I did with the glass and the book will show not only what I did but how I did it for more information on me and what I write and do check out my youtube channel and check out my blog at words mean stuff wordpress.com and thanks for watching

Channel: Farangian

Views: 71,181

Rating: 4.5637584 out of 5

Keywords: Beach, Glass, Jewlery, craft, crafting, tumbler, make, recycle, recycling

Id: eGkuOS9PdSo

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2016