Can you tumble just any glass into sea glass?

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:

[jpendowski]

Tumbling the glass made nice frosted pieces. I appreciate your mention of the grit size.

[trudiriddle]

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.

[darylmorse]

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.

[OriginsReborn]

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 :)

[LadyAstolat]

This is making me want to get a tumbler....
My husband is going to have a fit 🤣🤣

[ntcssj]

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.

[randallcox]

The little black residue spots are from the black rubber tumbler barrel.

[dalemaclaren]

If you sell anything from tumbled glass make sure people know it is faux seaglass.

[lennym]

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...

[kellyhollingsworth]

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.

[janicescragg]

You could sell it as 'Not Sea Glass'. Literally. Lol

[David-hmic]

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.

[darylmorse]

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.

[cglozyf]

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

[renegade]

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

[wickeddelight]

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.

[charlesmills]

Is it right to refer to this as ''sea'' glass, inasmuch as it is manufatured?

[LittleWillie]

I wrapped mine up in newspaper before I whacked it.

[johnmccrane]

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),