anything useful to do with glass remnants?

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Rozmataz

Rozmataz

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Jun 13, 2002
Posts
2,773
Loc
Fingerlakes Region of NYS
Having accumulated a fair amount of leftover pieces of glass (the really small, long skinny unusable type) since I opened in March... wondering if there is a positive ecological way of dealing with them?

Any suggestions?
 
I've looked for economical ideas for scrap glass since 1964 & have yet to come up with anything other than taping small pieces together for paper weights. I was told the lead content was to high for recycling purposes. I have thrown away tons of glass over the years. Fortunatly this waste can be factored into the selling price of it. I hope someone else has some good ideas for the stuff.

I once heard of a fellow who had an old cement mixer that he threw all his glass into along with a few chunks of heavy iron, turned it back into sand & sold it by the 25 pound bag. People used it to make garden walkways and who knows what else. If I ever come across a cheap cement mixer, I'll probably give it a try.

John
 
Crush it up and place it in the back of your competitors' frames. :D

Sorry, couldn’t resist!
 
I used to make wind chimes out of long skinny pieces. Whew, don't have time for that anymore. But hey, we do have access to a cement mixer.... Hmmmm.....

betty
 
Beating those long pieces of glass on the edge of the trashcan really relieve tension for me. I love the sound they make when they break inch by inch and I feel better all over.
 
PurplePerson- I am a total believer in the therapeutic (sp?) value of breaking glass. I had one day where I was trying to cut a mat for a customer while they waited. Three tries, and I still couldn't get it right. When I messed up the fourth attempt, I was so ticked I threw the mat across the room. :mad: Well, it took off like a Frisbee and went flying into a stack of scrap glass under the glass cutter. Every last piece broke with a deafening CRASH! :eek: Kind of an ooops! but I'll tell you, the tension just totally left me, and when I was calm enough I made the final attempt and got it right. To this day, there is nothing more satisfying a stress reliever than breaking glass LOUDLY! :D
 
Some of these responses definitely belong on Warped!! Very entertaining.... but I guess the bottom line is - trash it!! Thanks for all the input...
 
John, You have just given me the BEST reason (excuse) to buy a much wanted concrete mixer!!! Thanks!! It has always greatly bothered me that framing glass is non recycleable. Why wouldn't the folks who make it not want scraps back so they could make new stuff?? Ok, I know, it is cheap and heavy and transportation would be a factor... Yadda, yadda, yadda...

I have been playing with concrete lately and a lot of "recipes" call for "sharp" sand!!! I guess broken glass would certainly qualify!!! Great idea, THANKS!!
 
Okay, I guess this is warped. But, I come from a family of door slammers, and live in an old house where none of the doors fit properly in thier frames, so I can't slam any doors. But at work, we have a trash can just for glass, and when something goes wrong and I'm really stressed, I just take hammer to the glass in the trash can. It really works.
Heather
 
For all of you who are using glass as a tharaputic tool, make sure when your through venting, that ALL the glass is completly inside the trash can.

The worst glass cut I have ever seen in my life came from a peice of glass hanging out of a trash can. Person walked past it, the slice was so clean that the lady didn't even feel it. Her friend saw the blood first. The rest was in the doctors and lawyers hands. Fortunatly for me, it was when I worked for Aaron Brothers many years ago.

John
 
We have an asphalt plant in town (from which, luckily, I live upwind) who takes glass scraps. They don't seem to be particular about what type of glass it is. All we do is drive up with our recycling buckets and dump it out at the base of a huge surreal sparkly mountain o'glass. The spectacle of it is well worth the trouble going there!

But is it an ecologically sound practice? Do we really want to encourage more asphalt on our planet??????????

:confused:

We also have separate trash cans for brown paper, white/colored paper and Just Plain Trash. We take the paper to the cardboard recycler on the same trip as the glass. Needless to say we will leave on the curb for the city, only one large bag of trash per week. I like that.
This sounds like a whole other thread.
 
I have always, always wanted to 'get back' at a PIA customer by leaving to retreive their work and instead, break some glass and say OOPS.

Haven't done it yet but it is fun thinking about doing it. :eek:
 
Our shop doors are close enough to the frame counter that you can hear it when we smash the glass inside the metal trash can... the other framer and I have this little thing we do, from time to time, where one of us takes the hammer very loudly breaking glass scraps, and the other one screams at the appropriate times immediately following each crash. It's pretty funny and it can really freak out the customers sometimes.

You would probably want to do this when the boss isn't around. (Unless you are the boss.)
 
The two of you are TRULY warped
 
I AM the boss and except for my dog, Keiko, I have no cohorts to help with the screaming, so I do it by my self sans customers. It's the glass breaking that keeps the 'burn-outs' :eek: away(sometimes).
 
Originally posted by Jin Wicked:
[QB]... one of us takes the hammer very loudly breaking glass scraps, and the other one screams at the appropriate times immediately following each crash. QUOTE]

That's so funny! We do the SAME thing. But only when it's a 'regular' customer.

SCRAP GLASS IDEA:
When we have scrap IP glass, we cut it down and replace the glass in our shelf frames. We never discount these frames but we do advertise FREE IMAGE PERFERCT (or AR) glass in all our shelf frames. We never had great luck storing small cut pieces of IP so at least this puts it to good use.
Click to expand...
 
I think I may have come up with a suggestion on what to do with those small annoying pieces of glass. But I need help on finishing. Why not make picture frame kits for kids to make?? They can be given away as a promotional item.

I took my 3-4 inches of glass and cut them into squares, then doing the same with a piece of scrap matboard (that has magnets attached to back). The kids can glue their picture on the matboard and decorate. Then put the glass on top. The problem I'm having is how to hold the glass and matboard together when they put them together. Anyone have any suggestions??
 
Boy, you'd sure have to seam the edges of the glass real well so the kids wouldn't cut themselves.

What we do with glass scraps is take them to the local high school art department for the stained glass class. They practice cutting clear glass so not to waste the more expensive stained glass.

Betty
 
I think putting glass -- of any size, seamed edges or not -- in the hands of a small child would be a mistake. The frame kit idea seems good, but I would use acrylic instead.

Some kids manage to hurt themselves just walking across the front yard. We can only imagine the havoc they could inflict with a piece of glass.

Glass can be a fun art medium. Try piecing lots of broken scraps together to create an image, with or without color. Or use silicone to glue multiple thicknesses together for 3-Dimensional artworks.

It could be crushed and used as a decorative weight in the bottom of flower vases...maybe a florist would like to have some.

It could be cut into triangular or rectangular shapes and silicone-glued together to make flower vases or vessels for floating candles.
 
Check out the stained glass department of a craft store. Pick up some copper tape, solder and a soldering iron and you can make nifty little display boxes out of your left over glass and moulding. You can actually build some pretty good sized boxes relatively easily and they look great. I haven't actually done one myself but I watched Alan Lamb do a demonstration at one of our EPFG meetings and he put together a box in about 20 minutes. You can get various acids that stain the solder different colors for a more antique look. In fact I like the idea so much I think I'll do some for Christmas. Thanks for reminding me!
 
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