what is the COE of resysled glass?

[mary1_$]

I am thinking of recycling different color bottles into beads. I here all over recycle glass. How can you tell the coe of bottles? Or can you? I love some of the brown and green bottles. Help if you can. Thanks Mary

[squid]

They are all different and can not be combined with each other.

[mary1_$]

How do you find the coe of glass bottles. I know they cant be combined but there is someway to tell the coe or they couldnt recycle it. Help if you know.




They are all different and can not be combined with each other.

[squid]

They can recycle them because when they melt them all together, they essentially form there own new COE because they are melted and combined so thoroughly. I have never heard of a way to determine the COE of a single bottle unless you have someone do a scientific analysis. No one really cares about COE unless they are trying to make a specific one.

[Rob]

when glass is "recycled" its pretty much never melted down. It is ground up and used in different ways. At the recycling center (worked there for about 6 months) we crushed the glass and it was sold for a number of uses from being made into media for sand blasting, to being sold for use under asphalt.

You can use it to make beads if you wish, just don't mix the glass from different bottles and you'll be fine. sure it means spacers only but hey ya gotta make spacers anyhow.

btw most bottle glass is in the 80-89 coe.

[mary1_$]

Just wondered if I could do this myself. Would come in handy as I am on limited income and sure could use the glass. Thanks so much for help. Mary



when glass is "recycled" its pretty much never melted down. It is ground up and used in different ways. At the recycling center (worked there for about 6 months) we crushed the glass and it was sold for a number of uses from being made into media for sand blasting, to being sold for use under asphalt.

You can use it to make beads if you wish, just don't mix the glass from different bottles and you'll be fine. sure it means spacers only but hey ya gotta make spacers anyhow.

btw most bottle glass is in the 80-89 coe.

[Marjo]

I bet you could probably use pixie dust with recycled glass. I'm thinking beads with a pressed in texture and then rolled in the pixie dust (or pearl ex). Does not involve mixing unknown COE's and makes something a notch more interesting than spacers.

Anyone ever try it?

[Rob]

I bet you could probably use pixie dust with recycled glass. I'm thinking beads with a pressed in texture and then rolled in the pixie dust (or pearl ex). Does not involve mixing unknown COE's and makes something a notch more interesting than spacers.

Anyone ever try it?

yup. and yeah you can as well as a number of other things. still makes a spacer in my opinion, but a fancier one.

[Tink]

Most bottle glass is around 90 COE. I say "around" because it varies so much, even between beer bottles from the same six-pack. Bullseye used to use recycled glass as a base for their products, which they stopped doing almost twenty years ago. That's kinda how their line ended up being in the 90-ish COE range instead of higher, like the Italian glasses.

Anyway, to answer your question, Mary: The only way you can find out the COE of a piece of glass is to check it with a dilatometer within the appropriate temperature range.

But COE alone isn't enough to determine compatibility.

While it wouldn't be prudent to mix recycled glass with other glasses, you have a lot of options for fancying it up: Pixie Dust, as was mentioned... metal leaf and foil... Not to mention the shape of the piece itself. Some of the most beautiful works I've ever seen have been made from just one color.

[squid]

when glass is "recycled" its pretty much never melted down. It is ground up and used in different ways. At the recycling center (worked there for about 6 months) we crushed the glass and it was sold for a number of uses from being made into media for sand blasting, to being sold for use under asphalt.

You can use it to make beads if you wish, just don't mix the glass from different bottles and you'll be fine. sure it means spacers only but hey ya gotta make spacers anyhow.

btw most bottle glass is in the 80-89 coe.

If you read the information on these sites, they do remelt their glass and for that reason, only accept bottle glass - no window, pyrex or crystal.

http://www3.niu.edu/recycling/alum_facts/page3.html

http://www.gpi.org/recycling/faq/#faq2

It does mention about different uses for glass that is not recyclable, such as sandblasting, etc.

[di]

Actually glass bottles made for wine, beer, etc is something like COE 82. I recall seeing this in EZ Fuse software I have.
I have torched blue, green, brown and clear together with no problems.
Normally I cover the bottle with an old towel, smash it with a hammer and torch the shards. I make beads for my sagged Wine Bottle Cheese Boards, folks love the ideal of buying recycled glass.
di

[Anno Lynke]

about a month ago I asked about unknown coe of glass, haveing the same idea as you.
I was told fuse a piece of the unknown glass and a peice of glass with a known coe together and pull a stringer
If it curves to either side the coe is different
if it stays straight the coe is the same
it couldnt hurt (too much)to experiment

[playswithfire104]

I've mixed goldstone with bottle glass with no problems. I score around the bottle right before it thins into the neck and again near the bottom. Then tap carefully with a hammer (wear safty glasses) then I score them into quarters and break apart with planishing plyers. Then I score the quarters into sizes I want and break apart with the planishing plyers and Voila! Long flat pieces of glass. Just be careful not to cut yourself on the edges.

[squid]

Actually glass bottles made for wine, beer, etc is something like COE 82. I recall seeing this in EZ Fuse software I have.
I have torched blue, green, brown and clear together with no problems.
Normally I cover the bottle with an old towel, smash it with a hammer and torch the shards. I make beads for my sagged Wine Bottle Cheese Boards, folks love the ideal of buying recycled glass.
di

Hmmm... Float (window) glass is roughly 82 COE - and I am pretty sure bottle glass is not float glass.

[StellaBlue]

I've been using a bunch of recycled glass - bottle glass, old broken vintage glass, etc-lately. We smash 'em, and hubby melts 'em down into big globs and pulls rods.

I've found that I can use metal foil and 96COE reduction frits with no problem. Deep blue iced tea bottles or brown beer bottles with raku frit are pretty. Vintage marigold carnival glass with a sprinkling of Iris gold, gently reduced - just beautiful.

I've also made *tiny* base beads (one round) and encased with vetro clear, seen no cracking so far, so I may try encased stringer and apply that as a surface decoration.

Besides that there are a multitude of things that can be done with a single color- raised dots and stringers, hollows, try recycled copper tubing as a core (how green is that?), sculptural stuff (everyone loves little beer goddesses), presses, and handmade shapes, hearts, cubes, etc.

Rita

[bigtexun]

This is a really old thread, but I know how to test glass, so I thought I would share the technique, it is easy... This test can be used to compare the COE between two samples of glass. It can't tell you the exact coe, only show if there is a difference.

So mixing different glass in a project successfully involves many different factors. COE is the big one, but it is not the only one. How solid your final object is plays a role, so tac fused shards can mix better than the same mix fused into a large solid shape.

COE and viscosity both contribute to compatibility, with COE being the most important.

There is a way to measure COE, but measuring compatibility between two samples of glass is actually easy. To do this you need to fuse a small sample of the darker of the two glasses onto a somewhat larger sample of the most transparent of the two samples. So I take some green glass about an inch and a half across, and a shard of brown bottle glass that is and inch by a half inch. I fire these to either a tac or a full fuse, either works fine. I use a microwave kiln for this because I can see the sample in 30 minutes. This is the only thing a microwave kiln is good for, but it is worth having just for doing these tests...

So once you have a fused sample, you need two polarizing filters (standard linear polarizer, not circular). I bought a pack of 10 sheets of polarizer film for $8 on amazon. Your LCD computer monitor has a polarizer built in already, so you can use that as the first polarizer and the light source.

You orient the polarizers so that they are black, and put your cooled test glass between them. If the glass is at a different COW, you will see a glowing halo on one or both sides of the junction between the two types of glass. Any halo means they are not compatible, but you CAN get away with taking them together as long as they can flex a bit.

The halo is the glass acting like a polarizer, caused by it being bent under pressure from the dissimilar COE. The bent glass will alter the light in a way that it comes through the second polarizer twisted off-axis from the first one.

You can also do this test with polarized sunglasses and a computer monitor with a white page. Turn the glasses till they are dark against the computer screen.

If you wear polarized glasses, and notice patterns in some cars rear windows, what you are seeing is the stress intentionally built into the tempered glass. Tempered glass in the side and rear windows is designed to break into tiny cubes, instead of large daggers, and you can see it with a polarized lens.

The halos and patterns are not visible if the glass is of the same COE. You can mix any glass, but that stress means the glass wants to break. So depending on how far apart the COE and viscosity, your fusings might be loaded springs waiting for an excuse to break apart. When they do, they are under spring pressure, and glass shards can be sent flying.

Test your glass for compatibility, it is easy enough to do. You can fuse any glass together, and have it not crack right away. But it can be a dangerous ticking time bomb just waiting to sent shards flying the moment something taps it wrong.

[Robin Passovoy]

I've done a fair amount of experimenting myself, and posted the results on this site under the title of "37 colors of recyclable awesome", if you'd like to have a look. It was mostly me testing out various bottle colors and includes my working notes. I never tried to mix colors, though. I really hate it when my beads break.

[macintosh]

I know this is an old thread and last brought to life 11 days ago. Sorry.

I worked at a hot house that took in blue and green bottles to be recycled. The bottles would get run though a hammer mill with a coarse screen along with all our scrap. We kept 2 crucibles full of recycled glass at all times. We kept an area set up at all time to blow glasses and were expected to blow glasses with our "down time".

I know we tossed in 1/4 cup of some "powder mix" with each 5 gallons of recycled crush. We would have to mix the recycled crucibles every morning or we would get cracks. If we ended up with a terrible batch we would make "glass rock" out of it.

I don't know how much they made off the glasses after the prep work, but it kept us working so people had something to watch. I think the recycled part help the sales a lot.

[Croft Eeusk]

"Glass rocks' - We used to call that 'Arkansas Obsidian' :lol:

dj

[Frit Diva]

Macintosh, do you have any idea what powdered mix was? Obviously, some kind of additive that helps to broaden the COE, Or make the two (or more) types of glass more flexible with eachother?

I know this is an old thread and last brought to life 11 days ago. Sorry.

I worked at a hot house that took in blue and green bottles to be recycled. The bottles would get run though a hammer mill with a coarse screen along with all our scrap. We kept 2 crucibles full of recycled glass at all times. We kept an area set up at all time to blow glasses and were expected to blow glasses with our "down time".

I know we tossed in 1/4 cup of some "powder mix" with each 5 gallons of recycled crush. We would have to mix the recycled crucibles every morning or we would get cracks. If we ended up with a terrible batch we would make "glass rock" out of it.

I don't know how much they made off the glasses after the prep work, but it kept us working so people had something to watch. I think the recycled part help the sales a lot.

[macintosh]

I have no idea what it was the "powder mix" was Frit Diva.

I was hired to be a artist, but ended up working as a full time helper on the hot floor. They never let me do any of the mixing.

I never had a chance to lean a lot about glass chemistry.