glass beads

[Earthpeace]

I was looking at are pile of glass bottles this morning and was thinking if its possible to melt them down and make them into beads?
I thought if I was to brake the glass into small pieces with a hammer and put it in a cast iron pan, then melt it over an open fire ( outside) when it melted, if it did?
I was going to pour it on to a piece of clay that has had a bead pushed into it lots of times to make a mold.
Does anybody think this will work ? I not quite sure want the melting temp is of glass compared to the cast iron and the clay
Want could I used to colour the glass so its not 'see though'.( I will be melting green beer bottles )
Any thoughts

 

[Eric_Methven]

I was looking at are pile of glass bottles this morning and was thinking if its possible to melt them down and make them into beads?
I thought if I was to brake the glass into small pieces with a hammer and put it in a cast iron pan, then melt it over an open fire ( outside) when it melted, if it did?
I was going to pour it on to a piece of clay that has had a bead pushed into it lots of times to make a mold.
Does anybody think this will work ? I not quite sure want the melting temp is of glass compared to the cast iron and the clay
Want could I used to colour the glass so its not 'see though'.( I will be melting green beer bottles )
Any thoughts

I'd be very careful about melting beer bottles in a pot. Molten glass is over 1000 deg C. I doubt if a campfire could get glass that hot to be honest. You need concentrated heat - a blacksmith forge might get hot enough but you'd need a crucible to hold the glass. Pouring molten glass onto a bed of clay will be very dangerous too and you'll get a lot of splatter.

Have a look at this website. It tells you how glass beads are made. Whether you could use beer bottles though is a different matter. Beer bottles are tempered during manufacture so they will probably shatter into tiny hot shards if you put a hot flame to them.

http://www.artglass1.com/lghowto.html

and this one.

http://www.lapidaryjournal.com/books/stglass.cfm

Hope this helps

Eric

 

[gregorach]

You can definitely recycle beer bottles into other glassware successfully - I know of a couple of people who have a glass workshop in Italy, and every year they travel Europe doing just that at festivals. They'll take your empty beer, smash it up, stick it in the crucible and make it into something new right in front of you. Mind you, they are skilled glassworkers, so they know what they're doing...

 

[gregorach]

Whaddaya know - they have a website!

Vetromaghie - expermental free-blown recycled glass

Doesn't actually tell you much about the process, but I'm going to plug it anyway...