Tumbling Glass -MAKE YOUR OWN SEA GLASS

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE IN-DEPTH INSTRUCTION VIDEO! FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPG1JsD2r8

Making sea glass by tumbling it in a cement mixer. I am such a hick. Well it will never be a true sea glass because that is a chemical process we are unwilling to replicate but it makes a nice bulk substitute.




NOTE:
We have now filled all of our flower beds with it and other than being a pain to pick the cut grass and blown in leaves it has been great. The poor old mixer has taken a beating but is still going strong after new bearings.

Some hints:

Tumble wet, bout a gallon of H2O works well.

Add a few smaller rocks to greatly speed the process, too big and they will pulverize the load, too small and they are hard to pick out. Think match box car size.

Figure on 6-8 hours if you want a smoother sea glass look.

It is LOUD, wrap the drum in an old blanket and tumble in your garage if you don't want to irritate the neighbors.

You can toss in whole bottles and jars and they will break down but you will have to stop the mixer and add more again and again until it is full. We pre-break but are not overly anal about it. 3 1/2 5 gallon pails of glass is about right for my mixer.

Bottles work but other than the bases the chunks get REAL small. Antique broken glass from old dump sites works well as does broken window glass 1/4 and thicker.

The glass repair place more or less gave us whatever we wanted from their cast off and replacements, try them first.

Some glass tumbles with a greenish tint, you can see it when broken. I don't like the finished look and tried to avoid it.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• mixer
• broken
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• cement
• sea
• crafts
• mulch
• homemade
• gardening
• environment
• howto
• your
• new
• found
• own
• green
• life
• lost
• window

[acme663ryo]

We just put a new video showing the process up. Check it out!

[stingwraykw]

super cool - I just stumbled across the idea of using a cement mixer - I am soo jazzed, now I need to find a mixer - any suggestions for what type? I want to do volume, say ... 3 - 5 gallon buckets of crushed glass at a time. ! . ! . !

[acme663ryo]

That is a yard-sale mixer and doing this has been hard on it. The drum is fine but I have burned up motors and lost bearings. Not built to run for 12 hours at a shot. The amount of glass depends on the size of the mixer you find and how fine you break the glass first. It will break up bottles and jars all on its own. Too much and the glass doesn't break small enough and the end result will break under foot in your garden beds. Too little and all you will get is powder.

[wrightylaaad]

how about adding water and sand to the mix , would that be any good for the end result? great idea by the way

[acme663ryo]

We use water and rocks, I imagine sand would work well provided you only want the larger (1/2 inch or bigger) chunks. The sand would be hard to separate from the smaller stuff.

[glassfractal]

hehe, cool idea. what'd you do with it after it was tumbled?

[acme663ryo]

Flower Garden(s)

[RecoveryTTA]

That does seem like a good idea for smaller glass quanitities. It is clever if in the inside you have steel edges to break the glass.

[MosaicMaiden]

I am soooo jealous :)

[califgirl10]

What do you do with it after it's done? You really can't sell it as jewelry because real sea glass if you hold it up to a bright light you will see small "C's" in the natural sea glass, but this would be great for a garden or ? Pretty clever!

[theangrywaffle1]

the only reason i dont like this is because the fun of it is getting out there and finding it yourself

[citizenstand]

my neighbor was doing this inside and its super fking loud!

[ragonamuffin]

@notfireproofequipped Or an animal.

[ragonamuffin]

@glassfractal Huff the powder that it produces.

[whitesparrow333]

lol I thought about doing this a couple of months ago....thanks for experimenting for me!

[Litameena4chan]

I think this is an awesome idea! =] Brilliant!. But yeah I can see hoe the burnt out motors would result. =[

You're not a hick, you'r inginuitive! =] Even if you are a hick it's nothing to be ahsamed of! ; )