How to Make Homemade Sea Glass in a Rock Tumbler

Before you tell me this technically isn’t sea glass because it’s not made in the sea, yes I realize this. 🙂 I have a dual 3 lb. rock tumbler that I enjoy making beautiful, shiny rocks and quartz with that I use for different projects and displays. When I researched how to tumble glass in a rock tumbler, I read time and time again that you won’t get good results using basic wine bottles. I’m here to tell you that either I had 3 extraordinary wine bottles or all of that information is false. I wish I’d have documented this entire process better than I did but because of the information I’d found online, I didn’t have high hopes for success.

I actually started with some very large pieces of broken wine bottles, believing that most of these would practically disintegrate in the tumbler. Here’s a shot of my original glass breakage.

To start, I took 3 different colored wine bottles, put them in a paper bag, covered them with a towel, placed it all in a large plastic tray, and then smashed them with a tack hammer; the results are what you see above. To be honest, I also wore a pair of safety goggles and a bandana around my nose and mouth, just to be safe. You definitely don’t want to breathe in broken glass dust.

In a 3 lb. tumbler, I started tumbling about 1 and 1/2 cups of a mixture of colors of some of the larger pieces above, adding about 1 1/4 cup of ceramic pellets to cushion their tumbling, 3 tablespoons of grit one tumbling media. and water to just about 3/4 of the way to the top of the glass and pellets. In short, I filled my tumbler pretty full; apparently too full as there weren’t a lot of results by week 3.

I need to note here that I don’t run my rock tumbler 24/7, I only run it when I’m home, which equates to about 50 hours a week, as opposed to the 168 hours you get if you’re running them continuously.

I checked them at week 1 and week 2 and wasn’t seeing any significant breakage. At week 3, when I still didn’t see any significant breakage or rounded edges, I then went through the tedious process of picking out all of the pieces of glass, taking them back outside, and breaking them into smaller pieces.

At this time, I also removed about 1/4 cup of the ceramic pellets realizing that the glass actually wasn’t tumbling around enough for the results I needed.

From here, the tumbling container was still full but had more room for everything to tumble better. I let this final batch go 6 more weeks (again, note my tumbling hours) and this weekend I was met with great success.

This is a mix of skinny glass and thicker neck and bottom-of-the-bottle glass from 3 different average wine bottles. There are a few favorite pieces in this batch of mine, including the long skinny green glass pieces shown to the side of the dish, and also the white piece at the front that has an interior crack in it; I think these would all make beautiful pieces of jewelry. (I’m speaking to my jewelry-making sister here; I don’t possess this talent myself. )

I’m very happy with the final results and hope that my struggles but the final success in recreating sea glass here are helpful to you. Please leave me a note in the comments if I missed anything important. Here’s a recap of my steps:

• Select a wine bottle and soak in soapy water to remove the labels
• To break the glass, place the bottle in a paper bag, cover with a towel, don safety glasses and a mask to cover your nose and mouth, and then use a hammer to break the bottle. It’s easiest to break them at the curve of the neck first and then the breaking gets easier from there.
• Break the glass into approximately the size pieces that you desire – they’ll wear down a little but not overly much as long as your tumbler is full.
• Using a pair of needle-nose pliers, select the pieces of glass you want to tumble and place them in your tumbling container.
• When about 2/3 full of glass, add some ceramic pellets to help cushion their tumble.
• Add 3 tablespoons Step 1 course grit tumbling grit.
• Fill the tumbler with water, stopping just before the water level reaches the level of glass and pellets.
• Your tumbler should be pretty full by now but with room still to tumble everything.
• Keep in mind the weight restrictions of your tumbler. Glass is light compared to rocks but you want to be sure your tumbler isn’t overweight for any reason or you’ll cause undue stress on your tumbler.
• Tumble for at least 3 days and then carefully check the results – glass may still have sharp edges this early on.
• Continue to tumble, checking every few days or weeks, depending on how long you run your tumbler each day.
• Understand that the fuller your tumbler is, the less likely the glass will break up more but it also may take longer for it to smooth down to your satisfaction and the less full your tumbler is will cause the glass to tumble harder, which can result in more broken down pieces. This is a work in progress so you need to check on the progress somewhat regularly, at least until you know how long the process may ultimately take.

Can you make fake sea glass from wine bottles? I did and it’s beautiful!

Now, I’ve also read that if you want to return the frosted glass to it’s original, shiny glory, you can. I’ve not tried this yet but will keep you posted if I do. For now, I’m just happy I was able to create these beautiful little gems and hope you’ll try it yourself. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!