Can I make shards out of light bulbs.

[mary1_$]

I heard I could take a bad light bulb and crack it open and and clean it to use for shards. Has anyone did this? Kinda sounds like work. But I discard them in the trash. If I could recycle them that would be neat.

[Sue in Maine]

I don't know if this will work or not but do want to mention that the frosted bulbs are a bad idea. You're gonna love this! Do you know what the "frostedness" is? It's dust! If you poke the bottom center of the metal bottom of the bulb out (carefully!), you let air into the vacuumness of the bulb and once that happens, you can stop holding your breath from the fear of bulb explosion as you open the bottom. NOW swirl some water inside the bulb and the frosted stuff washes right off and you have a clear glass bulb you can see thru just like a window.

Why would you want just plain shards? Well, maybe but the dusty stuff wouldn't mix well with a bead I'm thinking.

Sue

[lunamoonshadow]

What's the COE of a LightBulb???

(and....god help me, someone's going to hit me...but, doesn't this belong in....THE LIGHTBULB THREAD???? )

Um, I wouldn't do it...they're just clear glass which isn't really going to show up on anything anyway, sharp as heck, you don't know the COE & who knows what that *is* inside the frosted ones (composition wise)

[Sue in Maine]

Lyn,

I'm thinking that a little bit of lightbulb shards would be just like using a tad of 96 frit on a 104 bead. You can get away with it if you use only a little bit. NOT the same for Boro and 104 (too big a COE spread) but I suspect lightbulb glass can be considered somewhere near a float glasses COE- which I can't remember at the moment, naturally.

No harm in trying it but I'd test it for a long time before ever considering selling a bead.

Sue

[JetAge Studio]

I wouldn't mix it, not even a little bit. Now if the glass color was really cool, like a black light, maybe......naw. Why risk it. It's industrial glass, definitly most probably NOT going to be compatible in any shape or form with art glass.
On the other hand, if you can test the shards against a sheet of float (Coe around 83-87) then maybe you could use the shards in a fused piece, but I'm not so sure about beads. I think the only cool thing you could use the shards for was to somehow keep the little printed insignia at the top of the bulb intact (you know, it says "GE 60 wat" or something like that), and fuse or maybe TRY to get the words to stay in a bead, that might be cool and worth a try. But to just use the clear glass, not much zip and zing in that stuff.

But that's just my two cents.
Renee Wiggins
JetAge Studio