recycled glass beads

Does anyone know how they make the recycled glass beads from Indonesia?

[Polly]

To the best of my knowledge, these are made by recycling (melting) old bottle glass, and even window glass.  This helps explain why there is such a color variance.  However, I don't know any of the details.  I will see what we can find out....

(These are the beads in question.)

[Polly]

Hi Dina,

A bit more information:
The glass from these recycled glass beads includes bottles of all sorts, window glass, TV screens and other misc sources of recycled glass.

The glass is first melted and made into sheets, then the sheets are cut.  The beads are hand drilled.  For the facetted beads, the beads are individually hand facetted by grinding.
The work is done in a few villages surrounding Jember in East Java. The glass crushing and melting takes place in small factories employing 10 plus workers. The facetting is done in households like a cottage industry.

Thanks for asking!

[Beadman]

Recycled Indonesian glass beads are made from available glass that is roughly fractured into pieces, and then ground and drilled (just the same as though the material were a stone).  I do not believe there is any necessity of melting the glass in preparation for beadmaking.  However, I would be interested to read of ANY evidence that would support this proposition.

Jamey

[Polly]

Thanks Jamey,

I bet you're right for the majority of the glass.  It's likely that it is only melted when there isn't enough that's large enough to drill and grind, and where the local resources allow for fairly convenient melting.

--Polly