Can you tumble just any glass into sea glass?
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- I tried my hand at tumbling sea glass for the first time. However, videos about tumbling glass have been more than done. So, I thought I would add a challenge and tumble glass from different sources and different types. The end results turned out wonderful.
I sell stones like these, jewelry, and other bits at:
goimagine.com/...
If you break things and an old pillowcase, and then just pitch the pillowcase when you’re done, you would have less shards of glass lying around.
Definitely. I just wanted people to see the glass being broken this time. Every time I've seen people break glass on UA-cam they cover it, so I thought I would show a bit more precise breaking.
yes that would work great but use two pillowcases then beat that on the hard floor. LOL
I fold it up into an old woollen blanket. Then I use a mallet to start. I also have metal- cutting preventive gloves (sort of like chainmail).
Tumbling the glass made nice frosted pieces. I appreciate your mention of the grit size.
Frosted is easy, I still haven't been able to get them back to shiny. I think some people use sand, but I found the silicon carbide gets a great reliable frosted look.
This is making me want to get a tumbler....
My husband is going to have a fit 🤣🤣
lol! A tumbler is a bit like, "I know where I started, but where am I going to end?" They are just too much fun. Send your husband my way, I'll have a chat with him. 😁
This is cool! Being in the city, the yard fill from our house sometimes has glass shards that I find while gardening. It'd be nice to have something to do with them when we're not allowed to put broken glass in our recycling bin.
That's so cool. I'm glad I could give someone a use for otherwise useless glass. Let me know what crafts you use it for!
Make your own tumbling medium from crushed and sieved/graded rock. I use all sorts but I find crushed flint is the best. I would smash up those bigger pieces before you start, they don't make very attractive 'gems' left as sheets of glass. Also, vary your colours and try and use old glass if you can. The colours and manufacturing bubbles and impurities in old glass make it much more interesting. Farming land in the UK is covered in 100+ year old waste glass and pottery used in the past for soil aeration. A great source of jewellery glass :)
Thank you! Those are all great tips. I'm planning on doing another video in a few weeks where I use different mediums for the tumbling. I'll see if I can throw in some gravel, too.
The little black residue spots are from the black rubber tumbler barrel.
That's what I had thought, too, but I didn't see any scratches or chunks missing from the inside of the barrel. That doesn't mean I missed them, though.
You need to add more grit, less glass, some ceramic pieces & let it tumble for a week straight and then check on it. At that point, if you want it more grounded / sanded down, then you add new grit & let it go for another week before you check again.
Thanks for the input! This is definitely going to a be a process of learning. Everyone seems to have a different method for glass. I'll definitely give your suggestions a try on the next batch.
A long time ago I had a 30 gal fish tank and instead of gravel on the bottom it was all sea glass, looked really great...
I had the thought of using the glass for that purpose, too, as long as the shards weren't too sharp for when the fish suck them up and spit them out. Along with the little pebbles that sometimes come out of my rock tumbles.
I put mine in a burlap bag on a piece of plywood, or an old pallet that I remove the boards and space them closer together. Then I use my landscaping tamp, or smash it between two cinder blocks. Mix in a little pea gravel it is cheap and make a good filler.
Next time, when the camera isn't on, I'm definitely covering the glass as I break it. It can be a huge mess.
If you sell anything from tumbled glass make sure people know it is faux seaglass.
Wouldn't have it any other way.
I love this idea for reusing waste!
It's so much fun turning trash to treasure.
@Ken Generations of Jewelry agreed, everything has so much life to give if we gave it the chance. Thank you for the response and the videos! I'm new to the channel, and i'm glad I found it.
@@alexisconnergaming6793 Me, too! Welcome to the channel.
I found that only pieces more than a quarter inch thick survived the tumbling process, so there's no point trying to use the sides of beer bottles.
Thanks! I haven't gotten my hands on any beer bottles, yet, but when I do I'll keep that in mind.
@@kengensjewelry The thick green ones that Lindemans lambic comes in are great if you are sourcing bottles specifically for tumbling.
@@wickeddelight I'll run that by my wife. I don't drink, so she's been the source of most of my colored glass.😁
@@kengensjewelry Lambic is fizzy fruity stuff with a low alcohol content, if she's not familiar with it. More expensive than regular beer, partly because the fizz requires the heavier bottles which cost more to make and ship. If taste is the reason you don't drink, you might actually like it, but if you don't drink for other reasons just disregard that.
I’m so glad you mentioned that. I have a Heineken bottle waiting to go in the tumbler.
You could sell it as 'Not Sea Glass'. Literally. Lol
hehe. I'd intended to label it "Faux Sea Glass". Good to see we think alike!
See glass
Oh my gosh. I just realized what that name sounds like. Maybe not such a good idea after all. Faux sea glass might be a wiser name
Well, now I know what I am doing wrong. I was hammering them in a plastic bag and I really had no control on where I broke the glass. But this does seem more dangerous. I also thought of just throwing the glass on the cement. lol
Yeah, I do recommend covering the glass. I left it uncovered for this video (if I remember right), but I actually cover it with a piece of old blue jeans. I can feel where I want to strike through the denim without getting glass shrapnel everywhere.
@@kengensjewelry I did do it uncovered but it turned out the same as far as shapes. I did a lot of turning my head and ducking. Luckily I did not get hurt nextime I will wrap iti in a towel.
I've been covering mine in an old pair of jeans that I cut up. The material is more sturdy and doesn't trap the sliver inducing shards.
It looks like you're filling the drums too full. I've used rotary tumblers to polish brass for reloading ammunition since the 1980s. Early on it became apparent that a drum that was 50%-60% full would polish the brass much faster than one that was 75%-80% full. The material and polishing medium must be able to fall inside the drum with every revolution. If it can't fall, it won't agitate and the process fails.
For sure there are advantages to filling a barrel to different levels. With glass, I'm just after a scuffed surface, so these I filled past the typical recommended level. That, and I knew the labels would break apart and create more room in the barrel as it went. Thank you for the suggestion, I like knowing an experienced eye is helping me.
you said that you thought a bottle would be easier to break after being in the fire..
LOL!!
it takes over 2000 degrees to form glass.
how hot do you burn your trash? LOL
also if you put a nail pointy side down in a wine bottle and shake it
you can bust the bottom out and have a round piece of glass
I've seen that before. I may try it in the future, but I wasn't looking for anything that big at the time of the video.
I thought maybe the fire would cause some stress fractures that would make it easier. I've had plenty of glass break in the fire all by itself, but I guess there's a reason this bottle came back out in one piece.
good video
Thanks for watching. 😀
You broke the glass in your wooden little box & then you poured the broken glass into the tumblers. So you would've had some wood in tumblers from just pouring everything into the tumblers.
Right, and with saw dust from the floor sweepings the wood might have contributed to a slow tumble. I'm planning on doing another glass tumble before long to "scientifically" remove variables. I see you subscribed, so you'll know when I do! 😊
Is it right to refer to this as ''sea'' glass, inasmuch as it is manufatured?
I would certainly never try to sell it as authentic sea glass, that's for sure. But, at least the term "sea glass" let's everyone know what the video contains. 😊
Good 👍
Thanks!
What happened to the blue bottle?
I might have shown it in another video. I ended up rolling it with ceramic media, which became trapped between the bottle and the barrel and rolled there without moving, basically cutting grooves in the bottle. The bottle was a little more frosted, but the deep lines etched into it ruined the effect. I still have it floating around to maybe try again at some point.
I wrapped mine up in newspaper before I whacked it.
That's a great idea. I have some old blue jeans laying around that I thought I might cut up for glass whacking.
I just use sand to tumble my glass!
Nice! I've thought about using sand from Lake Michigan, but now I'll definitely try it.
let’s see, you burn trash, you can’t break a bottle in one hit, you’ll throw the small shards out on the driveway ( never had a glass sliver in your foot) ,
lol. I haven't thrown any of it in the driveway yet, because I had the same thought. It's not the world's best idea. Just AN idea.