How to make sea glass

My wife, my kids, and I enjoy hunting for sea glass on the beach. Spotting a colorful bit of sand-polished glass provides the same kind of mini-thrill I got when I used to fish for trout as a kid in Colorado. I don't think it would be much fun to make my own sea glass, because the rarity of the glass is what makes it a joy to collect. But Rich Faulhaber at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories wanted to make a pathway out of sea glass, and having to collect it bit by bit on the beach would have been completely impractical. So he figured out how to make it using a cement mixer.

All you need is some glass, some sand, sea water and some way of mimicking the ocean and (bam!) you get sea glass.
I wanted to do large volumes, so I borrowed my uncle's cement mixer to mimic the ocean. The steel fins inside mimic large rocks. I started breaking wine bottles into small pieces and stole some sand from the kids play box, adding it all to the mixer. Since I didn't have any sea water handy I just filled it with tap water and turned it on. After an hour I checked and the sharp edges were all broken off, after two hours there was some frosting and smoothing and after 4 hours et voilà-- I had sea glass! With the capacity of the mixer I will have my garden path in no time.

The beach glass machine

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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papiermeister

I used to love strolling the beaches of Puget Sound and collecting bits of sea-seasoned glass pieces. I would sort them by colors and use them in various creative endeavors. This is a clever way of making glass resemble those bits collected along some sandy shore and I like it (especially now that I am landlocked in a freakin’ desert!).
But I have to say this: Cheater!
AmyTee

This post made me so happy! It reminded me of going to Silverton and New Denver, BC, where the beach glass is from paddle-boats back in the day. The history of the area is such that there are bits of Japanese pottery mixed in with the regular beach glass.

DWittSF, what is it about that particular beach that makes it illegal to pick up the glass?
vancouvergrrl

I actually did spend a lovely day once helping an artistically inclined friend collect sea glass for a (small) mosaic, which sadly meant I could not keep anything I found, and I found some gorgeous pieces, almost opalescent. So I really do appreciate the motivation here, and hope a picture of the completed path is posted.
Jardine

With the capacity of the mixer I will have my garden path in no time.

How will you walk on it after drinking that much wine though?
Godfree

Sometimes I wish I still had my old rock tumbler. I figure it would do a pretty good job making sea glass, albeit on a smaller scale.
- fencesitter
  
  Yeah, this looks like a big lapidary machine. Nothing really new, but then again, what is?
MadAir

Recommendation for sea glass collectors: the north shore of Lake Superior, between Duluth and the Split Rock Lighthouse. But wait until August.
misterjuju

Re: TFA, if you started with thicker pieces of glass, couldn’t you run the Sea Glass Machine longer and get even more realistic sea glass? From using, I dunno…maybe thicker bottles? I’m just curious, because I’ve never seen sea glass before now, and it looks beautiful in the images I’m googling :) especially the blue colored sea glass. wow….
Anonymous

just goes to show how popular sea glass has become,if people take the time to fake it
Anonymous

Now I know what to do with all the 19th century rat stop I removed from the barn while rebuilding the stable. Chuck it in the C-mixer!
JM

Up until now, I thought sea glass was made just our of sand, sea water and some unknown phenomenon. I had no idea that glass was actually another part of the equation.

Thanks for ruining my childhood memories, BB. And for giving me new knowledge.
Anonymous

I grew up in a small costal town on Lake Michigan. As a little girl I had a stunning collection of beach glass – my favorite peices were pretty blues and greens. Our house was right on the water, so I spent very nearly every day of my summers playing on the beach and in the surf. I left Michigan years ago; I’ve turned the beach glass into jewelry to keep my childhood spent on the water close.
Anonymous

a hobby rock tumbler can do the same thing.
Antinous / Moderator

There are whole beaches made of this stuff.
- travtastic
  
  That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. And with the dirtiest origin story ever.
Anonymous

You might check out Glass Beach in Ft Bragg CA. It’s on the site of the old city dump. The whole beach is filled with ground bits of glass. Most of the bright colors have been collected by now, but it’s still pretty cool
- DWittSF
  
  I was just going to post about Glass Beach. The irony is, even though it’s an old dump, it’s illegal to pick up the glass!
Bookburn

Must be nice to live near a cost.
- jetfx
  
  Only in summer, otherwise it’s bitterly cold and windy here.
Anonymous

Samuel R. Delany called it ‘driftglass’ in his story of the same name (where it’s a symbol, sorta, of change and loss and how things break and shift and turn into other things). I always liked that term for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftglass
falsemoniker

There’s a company in San Francisco that does it for you, using the same process on a much larger scale. Building REsources, in Bayview. (Also a great salvage yard.)

http://www.buildingresources.org/tumbled_glass.html
spidennis@gmail.com

Sea Glass is nothing more than trash, and before it gets smooth it’s sharp and dangerous. I pick up handful after handful of sharp broken glass while out on my morning beach runs. If you see glass on the beach please UNLITTER it! and help clean up our waterways. If you want “beach glass” just use the method described in this article and make it at home. Make all kinds of stuff out of glass and keep it out of our landfills. Recycle, ReUse, make it pretty if you can!
millrick

i admittedly woke up cranky this morning,
but what we’re talking about here is just tumbled craft glass,
not sea glass

oh,
and by the way,
‘get off my lawn!’
millrick

here’s a recent NYT article on sea glass

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/19glass.html?_r=2
Anonymous

Making tumbled glass like that is very good for craft projects, but any “serious” collector of beach glass will tell you it’s not allowed in competitions and they take it as an insult if you bring it in.