Making beautiful beads from antique glass! Recycling our mudlarking trash into treasures!

[Music] um [Music] hello okay so here we are at um one of our favorite sites mud locking sites but today we're here to look for something very specific because we're here to look for broken glass just broken glass because we have a project you might have seen some posts on our instagram yeah i'll give you a hint um but i'm so excited it's been such fun making those little beads and um now we've come back um and we know a little bit more about the glass and and how to use it and which glass works we know what we're looking for and before we left a lot of glass behind because we're like well what can we use sharp bits of glass yeah even though they were very pretty you know what to do with them so but now we've got a purpose of making b and it's so much fun can't wait to show you guys as well so let's go and get some glass yeah this is such an exciting project i've just found my first contender yeah so here is a piece of milk glass which we have not tried before so yes definitely taking this because i'm sure that will work well it might not but that's what we're here for to find out which glass works and which doesn't and i see a bit of cobalt there which has worked very well for us so far so we'll be taking the cobalt okay here's a nice piece of green looks like it could be off a cod bottle but that's a lovely color this piece of amber brown might come out nice take that oh look talking about beads that's a beautiful tiny little seed bead it's like a little orange one oh i'm losing it if we find the right color maybe we can try and recreate some of the bees we've already found but i just saw that oh it's a hole oh my gosh this whole oh it's got one tiny tiny little chip out of it oh wow look at that what's that sponge wear i think it is you see that sponge wear it's an incomplete little sponge wet dish oh my gosh i don't know how i didn't we didn't see this last time it's just got the tiniest little chip there that we can quite easily fix the rest was perfect oh i think mom's going to love that as well we'd definitely put that on display in our house with some sea glass in it or something or maybe we can keep all our beads in it oh i'm so happy with that i didn't expect it little sponge went dish it could be victorian probably is we'll turn this entry pink although pink doesn't seem to work very well in the beads it burns very easily but i'll take it anyway you never know we might master it there's some nice um sort of turquoisey glass here and it's solid turquoise all the all the way through sometimes it's just coated on the outside and then the core of it is clear but this is solid color um tried making some beads with this color and they never come out successfully they always seem to burn so we're just going to keep trying different pieces of glass until we find some that works swans are having a nap or are they geese oh i think they're geese oh that's like emerald proper emerald green if it's not focusing yeah that was probably some kind of funky bars oh cool that was going to be perfect because um in our experiment so far we found that green works quite well i think i might take that for the glass i wonder if we could make beads out of that an old battery casing nice piece of dark green here barrow in fur that would have said barrow infernus this looks like a nice green oh yeah poison bottle green lovely i almost ignored this because i thought it was a berry but i think it's a bead wow here we are looking for glass to make these and i find this beautiful red bead it looks like a berry wow it's lovely yes these are all coming home these pieces these colored pieces can't wait to use them little tiny bit of poison bottle blue here but it's enough to make a bead oh this looks interesting oh look at this it's glass look at the colors in that sort of on the surface but that might make an interesting bead definitely give that a try see hiding can't hide from me oh this is really similar to the color i found just before as well it's yellow on the inside clear you can just see there and then there's colors inside that's a bit big i'm running out of room maybe if i break it well that didn't work very well did it hello goose cheeky goose that's a great candidate for trying us beads oh this is what we want look at that fantastic what's this another bead oh this is a strange one it's sort of cone-shaped it's meant to be like that sort of cone-shaped oh that's interesting a sort of opalescent pink not found one like that before this time it is a berry some milk glass here that i would like to try i'd like to try and melt i found a milk of magnesia bottle and that it's all melted funny shape but that will make nice beads and i can call them magnesia beads a little bit of pink there hello hello okay so that was our day looking for glass to use in our bead making we actually found beads as well yeah i think we were pretty successful because we are laden it's so heavy i can hardly walk i've got to get back to the car look at this orange one oh that's lovely okay so yeah let's get back home and make some beads [Music] the [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello okay so here is some of our lovely glass that we found yep and there's all sorts here there's art glass like this piece here and there's bits of cod bottle some lovely pinks and greens are some nice like variations of greens i love the different greens but they're all nice and clean and shiny and sparkly now and we have smashed um a lot of the bigger pieces up into like smaller more manageable chunks that we can melt down for our beads so yeah let's let's go upstairs let's try it and try it out we're so excited i know it's so exciting making our own bees it's incredible i can't believe i know isn't it but yeah let's go and do it cause i can't wait any longer okay [Music] okay so here we that's our are yeah everything's set up we've got set up for melting glass we've got a blow torch a big powerful yeah this is the one that we already have this it's the one that i use for my casting so um it's a map gas torch so it's it's also perfect for lamp work as well i think yeah so we're lucky to have already yeah and we're using the lovely what lovely dish we found early 19th century sponge wear dish that alex found on the foreshore and it is not cracked it's got a chip there but we're going to try and fill that in with milliputs yeah and then it's beautiful i absolutely love it and it's got sand in it and it's holding our mandrels which we will be making the beads on so basically with the mandrels are like stainless steel and they come in different sizes different gauges and here here's them here and they have to be dipped into this which is a it's called bead release it's basically like so it slips like clay yeah it's basically exactly the same place look and you mix it up shake it up and you literally just get the mandrel just dip it in and pull it out and it has it says on the bottle it has to be the consistency of like a thick milkshake but that's it and then we've put it we've put the sand in our dish so we can just stick them in there to dry and we've pre-dipped all of these ones and they have to be dry before you can yeah they have to be but this is not a tutorial no don't we're just saying what we've done if you want to learn how to do something you should probably get classes not like us yeah don't copy us stumble our way through the dark we've got a fire board a solid stone marble here and metal work surfaces and we've got a fire blanket for putting the beads in to cool slowly otherwise they crack if they don't cool slowly safety glasses you should have um i think sodium flare protection glasses but because we haven't been doing this very long um we don't really need them because we don't really spend a lot of time making beads but now these will do anyway it's not that bright yeah six socks we're gonna make beads so let's get started let's do let's make some antique modern beets we see we love finding beans and so it's so cool to make them okay so we're gonna pick what glass we're gonna use and then who's gonna start first you might as well you're in the seat okay you need to put your seat up and we'll have to reach yeah the cameras okay so let's do it okay so i think i'm gonna try one of the multi-colored pieces normally when people are doing lamp work they use glass rods so they can hold the rod directly um because it's long enough to keep their fingers away from the flame but these are too short so i'm just going to use these so yeah yeah there we go [Music] here we go so i'm going to try and eat it up really slowly by dipping it in and out of the flame and if there's two of us we can remind each other [Music] do [Music] it's a little bit lopsided but i hope it works out but i think i'm going to try another glass now okay i'll get you a piece next one the first bead looks really good look i can't look at it because i'm concentrating but it looks good that blue actually is very nice to work with i've tried it before blues are generally work quite well don't they [Music] hold the long bit like there horizontally yeah that looks good isn't it it's great it's gone it's gone beach shaped pull it out of the flame a bit so we're hoping the multi-colored one will make a nice smile inside it looks so pretty this one's melting really quickly not too big [Music] okay i think it's done all right we've got to put them to bed now to let it cool slightly or it sticks to the flying blanket as we found out when we did our first bead and it was covered in fiberglass hair okay my turn [Music] and i'm going to try poison bottle blue so i need a mandrel [Music] [Music] this might be an interesting shape i like it i like it long like that it's like i don't know like flat you can melt it into like a global all all right next this animal green what do you think it's really nice look at that color that's beautiful emerald color [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] haven't we all [Music] that's lovely that last one [Music] the last time this glass was melted was probably over a hundred years ago [Music] that's melting really nicely isn't it yeah it's shiny as well pretty it's very stressful on your arms [Music] you're literally watching us learn which is probably very agonizing to watch especially if you've done that black before i think you learn by failing we've done quite a lot with that [Laughter] okay these ball got's going to kill me later to be um if they're not annealed then they'll be very weak beads because um as they're cooling different parts the bead are cooling at different temperatures which creates a lot of stress within the bead [Music] [Music] okay if this green works i'll do like the whole whole row yeah [Music] [Music] hello okay so now we're going to show you the results of all the hard work yeah um some successes and some not so successful it is the next day and yesterday we made a lot of beads off camera we made loads of them we ran out of gas actually we did we actually ran out of gas and um yeah we suppose you didn't want to watch us making beads for hours so we made a lot of them off camera but we haven't had a proper look no in there just glimpses because we couldn't take the blanket off for long um while they were cooling yeah if they don't cool slow then they just crack and yeah so we're gonna have a look at them um right now oh wow look at the look at the pink oh okay right you can't probably see them very well from up there so we'll bring you down here we'll have a closer look at them [Music] okay well here they are [Music] in the sunshine don't they look absolutely amazing wow i can't believe we actually made those so we're gonna we have to take them off the mandrels now um and put them in the kiln to anneal them which is another scary step because yeah with them all being different types of glass some of them might not last like survive the kiln so we're a bit worried but it's got to be done we've not put we've not tried annealing any beans yet so it might go horribly wrong they might all just shatter or something i don't know but so basically you just twist them off the end it's not that easy some of them get quite stuck [Music] yeah sometimes you need to get the pliers on the end of the thing and then twist it [Music] [Music] [Music] the sun is in the wrong position right now but we did it look well we got them off the mandrel well we've got them off the mandrel they've still got to be annealed yet so they're not now they're not out of the woods yet now the very last stage is annealing so keep your fingers crossed yes push them well wish them well next time you see them they'll be complete clean beads isn't it incredible it's amazing i can't believe look well i'm not going to get excited yet don't count before they're annealed okay okay so we've got our kiln here and this is a just a little kiln that uh mom got me for christmas like i don't know like three years ago maybe maybe three years so it has seen quite a bit of use since then and over here we've washed our beads giving them a bit of a wash and they look amazing yeah drying in the sunshine hopefully the sun doesn't crack them with the heat but they look alright they look fine okay so we're going to put them on this bit of fire blanket got hold of it and then we've cut it to the right size and then put them in the kiln and then slowly heat them up to anneal them we'll see you on the other side lads good luck good luck good luck good luck okay so it is the next day and this is our second batch we've already taken the first batch out but these have been cooling overnight and they are at room temperature or at least i don't think it's 28 degrees in the room exactly it's probably colder than that but it doesn't seem to want to drop lower than 28 degrees so i'm gonna take them out now and it's taken about half the day yesterday and all of the night tonight to anneal these properly [Music] oh okay so here are the beads we made oh my gosh oh my god i can't believe we made beads i just can't look how many we made how many are there there's about 162 wow not counting the ones that failed here's some of the fails yeah someone cracked and yeah they just didn't make it um we could use some of them for cabbage cabochons yeah they haven't been annealed though yet hopefully no better oh yeah so we made uh most of them off camera because it's basically just the same thing yeah but um i think we got better at it didn't we def definitely got better and better at it um mo the first batches we made they aren't here but the bees were just like gray and a horrible like burgundy color um because we just burnt the glass at too high actually it's a bit here you can see it goes black yeah can you see how it's just gone black we melted this at far too high a temperature so the beads were this horrible black color but anyway we did get better and it's a learning process it was it was a huge learning curve but so um i have actually after we took them out the kiln i should say um it we spent well i spent ages like a few hours cleaning the inside of every bead because the bead released from the mandrel um gets stuck inside so i had to use a reamer yeah but i just used a diamond file to get the bead release out the same thing really yeah but anyway look at them we've been playing with them holding them and feeling them and [Music] so i'm gonna take some more pictures of these close up and show them at the end some get my macro lens on okay you can see um these are the sort of bits of glass we've been using to make um the beads yeah so we can show you which beads were made with which kinds of glass so these beads are this is a bit of disinfectant bottle i'm not sure what that is i'm not sure what that bottle is but the turquoise oh these beads here these absolutely amazing uh multi-colored blue ones are made with mostly these these pieces because they've got a lot of blue colors in and the red is um we have got in here but it's a piece of old tail light of a carve like a vintage card a vintage car tail light yeah so it's tail light red tail light red uh oh turquoise which didn't work at first for ages because i would the torch was too high temperature but i finally got the hang of it and i made some and they're they're beautiful i made my very own padre beads these original beads here they're called padre beads and they're um yeah these blue turquoise ones and they date from around the 19th to the very early 20th century and they were made in either venice or china as trade beads um they were traded in africa and america with the native americans because obviously the turquoise color is sacred to the native american pupils and you can see how many we find we find loads of them for some reason yeah obviously very popular bead and these ones here i think are my favorite yeah because these are mostly cod cod bottle green gold bottle you'll see a bit of the broken yeah and there's a little trunk that we've actually concealed it's actually a beautiful color it's lovely in beads it is that's those ones the lovely pale green color these ones are more of the art glass yeah so these are more of the yellow toned art glasses here they've come out really nicely as well got some reds and colors in there and we've got some more transparent blue these ones we burnt at first and some of them are a little bit burnt because you can see bits of um like a muddy yeah it's quite nice though it makes yeah it does but that is these and that they're just like a dish transparent bits of glass they i think there is some kind of art glass dish and these are lovely pink ones oh yes that i think this is a similar kind of dish as well yeah yeah it's the most beautiful pale pink color isn't it like a baby painting family yeah i love the way they've come out it's a beautiful color and then these lovely green greens which go actually really nicely so many different shades of green this look yeah that's that green that was some kind of dish as well some kind of bowl that's so beautiful isn't it beautiful and what are these ones it's sort of a pinky so this is a bit weird because these oh yes it wasn't to start with no um these are made out of orange glass and they're all orange and clear isn't it yeah orange and clear and then they went pink so they turned into these like beautiful swirly pink beads which is well most of them are made out of this but yeah strange alchemy going on there and then we have the white ones white ones some of them came out a bit pinky yeah it just shows the different kinds of glass see the different glassy this was white but you can see how it's gone pink and then the really white ones you made that one the white ones this glass came out really nice and white yeah you can see the lovely little white beads there amongst the pinky ones um orange okay these aren't many oranges there's not many oranges but these oranges actually did come out because we have two different kinds of orange glass there's like a a darker one and a lighter one the lighter one worked but it was the darker one that turned pink which is a bit weird and more green more green there's actually different kinds of green in here including poison bottle green which is from this bigger shard here so that's that mixed in there and then the blues which include poison bottle blue bottle blue which is a cobalt and yeah there's some like teal blues i love those teal blue ones like light light blues there's all kinds of blues that we find that's that's one of them that we've used since it's melted there so yeah it's been it's been great fun um experimenting it's been to see how these would come out as speeds and i don't know i think we've been quite successful i think i'm happy with them anyway my our technique might not be quite there yet because we are beginners but i think well i don't think anyone's attempted this before no it's it's yeah it's uh it's very temperamental the old glass isn't it because it's not quite the same kind of glass thought later maybe we should try attaching some um glass rods to the glass yeah so we can hold it to make it handling it much easier but you know there we are there are oh how many beads are there as well there's about 162. crazy this is not including the fails we did we had a lot of failures um that just went a hard brownish color and some of them cracked um as well during the process but yeah that's it there they are okay that's it for this week and we hope you've enjoyed our little adventures into bead making we had a lot of fun yeah we have and we've surprised ourselves so um and so we'd like to say a big thank you to all of our subscribers and everyone who takes the time and trouble to comment yeah all of our patrons we could not do this without all of our patreon support so thank you very much to those people and all of the people who have very very kindly bought us things from our amazon wishlist including a book about beasts a book about beats which is fantastic is how we've been very helpful this uh which is how we discovered the history of the padre yeah yeah so thank you very much to the person who brought us that yeah so goodbye goodbye and we'll see you next sunday bye [Music] foreign you

Channel: Northern Mudlarks

Views: 194,257

Rating: 4.9591675 out of 5

Keywords: rockhounding, northern mudlarks, treasure hunting scotland, treasure hunting, crystal hunting, Mudlarking, mudlarking uk, beachcombing, bottle digging, northern mudlarking, gem hunting, Sea glass hunting

Id: BMzoAT7NGdI

Length: 39min 19sec (2359 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020