Tumbling Glass — How hard can it be?

My goal was to tumble glass in two ways. Some I wanted to make as shiny as possible. I also wanted to try making imitation beach glass.

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Kingsley North is a lapidary store in Michigan's U.P. They make a great cab machine and sell many other brands too. They have a huge selection rough rock, tumblers, grit, jewelry supplies etc. at good prices. I buy most of my coarse grit from here in 45 lb. bags. It's the best price I have found. If you buy using the following link, I make a small commission.

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[MichiganRocks]

If anyone would like to have this glass, you’re welcome to it. I am not willing to mail it out because I think it would just get broken in transit. So if you live in the Alpena area, or are passing through, come get it. The genuine beach glass is not up for grabs, I’m giving that to my sister.

[RocketRockhound]

I can’t believe you just pulled out fire juggling like it’s nothing!

[iforester]

Interesting and fun video. The highlight, of course, has to be the amazing juggling!!

[Promatim]

The 'too perfect' beach glass looks exactly like the stuff I used to hunt for in the PNW, around Puget Sound. Your lake Michigan stuff, I've never really seen before. Funny how glass from different bodies of water looks different.

[salishseaquest]

Mother Nature has it all figured out for the making of beach glass. No matter how hard we try, we will never beat the real deal. It was an educational video, Rob. I've collected beach glass for years and I watched with interest to see how many steps you would take to reach your goal. Glad you were willing to try and show us all that you did.

[fools_opinions]

The beach glass you find in my area of the UK mostly looks like the peice you were tumbling before polishing. The beaches here are long and almost entirely sand with few pebbles so it gives the glass a much more uniform smoothness.

[andianu]

When you started juggling fire sticks I literally started HOLLERING! YOURE SO That was the most epic surprise I’ve ever seen in any rock hounding video and it want even a rock. sooo amazing how did you learn to juggle fire?

[brightbkh]

The shiny glass and the very smooth frosted glass are my favorite by far. They look so much cooler to me than beach glass. Don’t look at it as a failure, it’s beautiful!

[Mzungumb]

Great video! I heard an interview with a 10-year old national chess master today who had some very wise words. He said, “I never lose...I only learn...Because when you lose, you have to make a mistake to lose that game. So you learn from that mistake, and so you learn [overall]. So losing is the way of winning for yourself." So, this video was a success because we all learned a lot! I enjoyed every minute. :) Thank you!

[mojavegold-]

I started tumbling glass around ten years ago - trying to find an eco-friendly way of cleaning up a remote desert property I bought that was littered with many hundreds of pounds of broken antique glass. I run the glass for 8-12 hours at a time every few weeks or so - whenever I have time and when we have surplus solar energy available. I use a very large WWII-era cement mixer - containing only the glass, water, a few broken bricks and a few shovels full of gravel as media. The glass eventually comes out very nicely frosted and rounded - but not with the "loop"-shaped scratch patterns you see in natural beach glass. My favorite pieces are thick red, orange and blue pebbles. The sun-purpled antique manganese glass is also very nice when tumbled.

[heathermorse]

I decided to tumble glass as well before I came across this video. I found that just using beach sand and water for 2 days in my tumbler worked perfectly! I love the results you got. Great video as always!

[emmitstewart]

This brings back memories. Back in the eighties, I was making gemsai (Small trees made out of copper wire with tumbled stones for "leaves"). Near my house was a football practice field with a high fence around it and across the street was a bar. Drunks from the bar or just driving down the street seemed to find it a great sport to try tossing their beer or wine bottles over the fence. Most missed and the bottles fell on the sidewalk or grass strip. Passing by one day I thought that I could break down the brown, green, or blue bottles to make leaves for my trees. It only took about an hour to gather all the glass I needed, I broke it up into pieces from ten to fourteen millimeters (approximately) and tumbled them. I used the green bottles for summer leaves, and brown for fall leaves. My biggest success, however, was when I found a lot covered with pea gravel that had a lot of small white quartz pebbles. I collected a tumbler full of these pebbles and used them as the clumps of snow on a winter tree.

[stevenstandley]

Is there no end to the talent contained in this man :)

[poly_hexamethyl]

2:37 When I was in grade six I did a science project where I took some nichrome wire hooked up to electricity so that it glowed red hot, and then rotated a glass bottle against the wire to heat it in a narrow line, followed by plunging the bottle into water, and it cracked perfectly along the line.
4:07 Kudos for the awesome juggling!!! That just made my day!

[egantw]

I've been watching some of your videos because I have collected a bunch of rocks through the years and have always thought about polishing them up. I recently purchased a beginners tumbler from Harbor Freight just to see if I like the hobby. Your videos have been super informative and I appreciate your dedication. AND wow, that fire juggling was totally awesome! Good job.

[davidhile]

My wife and 3 daughters are avid beach glass collectors. I’ve often thought of trying to make some but haven’t done it yet. I think what you ended up with would fool most people. I think I would have done it the same way you did with perhaps throwing in a little bit of silicon carbide to speed up the process a little. I’ve seen people cut bottles by wrapping a piece of copper wire around the bottle like you did with the yarn. Then twisting the ends together and heating the ends with a propane torch, then plunging TV he bottle into ice water. I think I would break up the glass using a similar method like you use to split rocks only maybe using a thick blunt rod instead of a chisel. Our Lake Michigan beach glass is usually fairly small pieces. Thanks for exploring another facet of tumbling !!!

[rockinwitht]

Cool video! I am a fan of beach glass, and it was interesting to see how different each batch was. And I loved the juggling !!

[justjulee]

I really liked how you kept at it with trial and error. I was very interested in seeing how the shiny glass was going to turn out as well. Very cool video.

[gavinjenkins]

I think the main thing you're missing is that cheap glass leaches out its soda over years chemically, not just mechanically, from acid, water, air. Even just glass sitting in a forest being rained on and being damp and muddy, not knocked around at all, gets hazy and frosty and covered in carbonates. I think if you broke it up smaller at first, did the big drum like earlier, and then let it sit around in slightly acidic damp conditions for months/couple years, it might look a lot more realistic. I don't know how to accelerate it.

[nancygoerlich]

You're a man of many talents! Very impressive juggling skills!