the best way to crush glass to make frits

Yes, sorting by color is critical, even if you were using the cullet
locally as a crafts material. The transportation issue I think is
important, though. Waste glass containers are broadly distributed
throughout our communities. Collecting this safely, sorted by color
and type of glass is difficult and requires significant expenditure of
labor and fuel. I personally think it is the wrong way to approach
re-using this material. Collecting waste container glass on a smaller
scale and processing the cullet into locally made products might work
better.


What local products can be made on the smaller scale? Our City recycles
glass to use in the local parks. Is this the type of recycling you are
talking about?

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 02:43:36 -0500, "starlia"
wrote:

What local products can be made on the smaller scale? Our City recycles
glass to use in the local parks. Is this the type of recycling you are
talking about?

I like fused glass products but that is only by watching what other
people do. I am relegated to playing around with stucco in my spare
time. Terrazzo products also look interesting and on a bigger scale it
can be used as a flux in bricks.

As far as the bulk usage of color unsorted, waste glass, collected in
curbside pickup programs and processed with commercial hammer mills,
there are suggestions to use it as groundcover or mulch. That seems
like a waste of a good raw material, though. Locally, it is offered
for sale at $32 a cubic yard and you haul it. There is a waste
management company in the northwest I read about that has a 30,000
cubic yard pile of milled green glass and no clue as to how to get rid
of it. Beneficially, that is.

We have about 7 million tons of discarded glass going into landfills
in the US yearly and that seems like a horrible fate for a useful raw
material.

Rusty Mase

"Rusty Mase" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 02:43:36 -0500, "starlia"
wrote:

What local products can be made on the smaller scale? Our City recycles
glass to use in the local parks. Is this the type of recycling you are
talking about?

I like fused glass products but that is only by watching what other
people do. I am relegated to playing around with stucco in my spare
time. Terrazzo products also look interesting and on a bigger scale it
can be used as a flux in bricks.

As far as the bulk usage of color unsorted, waste glass, collected in
curbside pickup programs and processed with commercial hammer mills,
there are suggestions to use it as groundcover or mulch. That seems
like a waste of a good raw material, though. Locally, it is offered
for sale at $32 a cubic yard and you haul it. There is a waste
management company in the northwest I read about that has a 30,000
cubic yard pile of milled green glass and no clue as to how to get rid
of it. Beneficially, that is.

We have about 7 million tons of discarded glass going into landfills
in the US yearly and that seems like a horrible fate for a useful raw
material.

Rusty Mase

basically, it's sand. i think it'd make a jim dandy beach somewhere.

In Rusty Mase wrote:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 12:25:30 -0700, "Charles Spitzer"
wrote:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...em=3835209176&
ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

I have a baby one!
http://www.glasscompactor.com

Rusty Mase

If you are talking home/commercial use, how do you trap the glass powder
produced while crushing the glass? That is dangerous stuff, and the
main resion I buy frit rather than making it at home.

To the original poster - see www.warmglass.com and use the search engine
in the bulletin board. There is usually discussion on making frit.

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 13:21:25 -0000, Nancy KP
wrote:
(snipped)
If you are talking home/commercial use, how do you trap the glass powder
produced while crushing the glass? That is dangerous stuff, and the
main resion I buy frit rather than making it at home.

Nancy, I started off designing an appliance to grind up discarded
bottles safely. That requires a filtered ventilation system to trap
the fines as well as remove moisture. Adding all of these features,
though, pretty well takes this type of appliance out of viable
commercial usage - at least in today's definition of commercial
viability.

Glass dust is potentially very bad but not for the same reasons dust
from quartz sand is dangerous. Most glass dust deposited in your
lungs will dissolve whereas quartz sand dust continues to accumulate,
resulting in silicosis.

Because (most) glass fines will dissolve, the chemical constituents of
the glass will become free and possibly available for entry into your
body - chemically. The dust associated with common bottle glass would
not be as dangerous as dust from lead crystal glass and some colored
glasses and possibly even boro glass.

I think buying frit is a better alternative. There are commercial
sources of processed cullet that are better than grinding your own,
also. I needed some red cullet and ended up buying it as, first, I
could not find scrap red glass and second, even if I could find it I
do not think I would want to process it.

Rusty Mase

In Rusty Mase wrote:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 13:21:25 -0000, Nancy KP
wrote:
(snipped)
If you are talking home/commercial use, how do you trap the glass
powder produced while crushing the glass? That is dangerous stuff,
and the main resion I buy frit rather than making it at home.

Nancy, I started off designing an appliance to grind up discarded
bottles safely. That requires a filtered ventilation system to trap
the fines as well as remove moisture. Adding all of these features,
though, pretty well takes this type of appliance out of viable
commercial usage - at least in today's definition of commercial
viability.

Glass dust is potentially very bad but not for the same reasons dust
from quartz sand is dangerous. Most glass dust deposited in your
lungs will dissolve whereas quartz sand dust continues to accumulate,
resulting in silicosis.


Glass powder does *not* dissolve in the lungs - once there, it is always
there, also leading to silicosis. Not a good way to die.
When working with glass powder, or making frit, you should always wear a
resporator, and when cleaning the area, a vacuum with a HEPA filter.
All glass dust is dangerous, it does not make any difference what
chemicals went into it.



Because (most) glass fines will dissolve, the chemical constituents of
the glass will become free and possibly available for entry into your
body - chemically. The dust associated with common bottle glass would
not be as dangerous as dust from lead crystal glass and some colored
glasses and possibly even boro glass.

I think buying frit is a better alternative. There are commercial
sources of processed cullet that are better than grinding your own,
also. I needed some red cullet and ended up buying it as, first, I
could not find scrap red glass and second, even if I could find it I
do not think I would want to process it.

Rusty Mase

"Nancy KP" wrote in message
...

If you are talking home/commercial use, how do you trap the glass powder
produced while crushing the glass? That is dangerous stuff, and the
main resion I buy frit rather than making it at home.

Hummmh......whenever I need a particular frit...I just take the glass, heat
it to 3 or 400F, and drop it in a bucket of cold water. Whatever "dust"
there might be is "steam".

Nancy KP wrote:

Glass powder does *not* dissolve in the lungs - once there, it is always
there, also leading to silicosis. Not a good way to die.
When working with glass powder, or making frit, you should always wear a
resporator, and when cleaning the area, a vacuum with a HEPA filter.
All glass dust is dangerous, it does not make any difference what
chemicals went into it.


Glass doesn't dissolve in the lungs? Some does, some doesn't.

http://www.glassalchemyarts.com/safe...issolved-44867

If you do a lot of grinding and sawing with recirculating water, you
will notice after a while that the water becomes slippery on the hands.
This is caused by glass that has dissolved in the water.


--
Jack


http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/xmissionbobo/

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:37:13 -0600, nJb wrote:

http://www.glassalchemyarts.com/safe...issolved-44867

If you do a lot of grinding and sawing with recirculating water, you
will notice after a while that the water becomes slippery on the hands.
This is caused by glass that has dissolved in the water.

That information is well put based on what I have read. There are
other ways to get this information - more or less indirectly from
sites like:
http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsamp...oc/chmn_S.html

Where they distinguish between the work place hazards of various
silica substances - typically between amorpha silica compounds and
crystaline silica compounds.

Since there are thousands of glass formulations, one would really need
a Material Safety Data Sheet for each one if you start grinding it
into powder and possibly breathing or exposing your skin to the dust.
It is a complex problem and avoiding dust altogether works best.

Rusty Mase

"nJb" wrote in message
...

If you do a lot of grinding and sawing with recirculating water, you
will notice after a while that the water becomes slippery on the hands.
This is caused by glass that has dissolved in the water.

To be more precise, the water has leached some components out of the glass.
It hasn't dissolved it as such, as the silica skeleton will be left,
depleted of the components leached out.

The Germans developed a range of insulation glass fibre compositions,
designed to dissolve in the fluids in the lungs. This revolved around the
ratio of alumina to the other alkali and alkaline earth oxides. KI 40
indicates a cancerogenity index of 40, which means that the fibres dissolved
in the lungs in 40 days or less.

http://www.blauer-engel.de/englisch/..._ral.php?id=29
is one reference to it.
--
Terry Harper
http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/