Mods, if you think this is a better fit somewhere other than Café Society, please move.
I’m using a small, cheap rock tumbler to tumble glass to which I want to give a beach glass kind of finish. I just started it with coarse grit. I don’t know how coarse it it, since it was part of a tumbler refill kit and they don’t label the grit that way. I’m guessing 60/90 maybe?
Anyhoo, my question is this. Glass is much softer than rock and, from what I’ve read, will develop a beach glass finish with just a few hours of tumbling. I’ve got a hell of a lot more glass than I have grit, so I was wondering if I can reuse the grit – take the finished glass out, put some more “raw” glass in, and keep on tumbling.
I’m not a lapidarist but can make a swag.Many abrasives continue to cut after breaking down due to continual exposure of sharp edges,though the cutting usually isn’t as rapid.So you will likely get diminishing returns if time’s the metric.
As a blanket statement,I can’t agree that glass is softer than rock.
I had researched this a couple months ago because I wanted to make my own beach glass for mosaics. I haven’t tried it yet but I bookmarked a couple sites.