How to Drill Sea Glass

What you’ll need:

Water is perfectly adequate as a lubricant for your drill piece

Water dish and piece of wood

Diamond Drill bits

Rotary drill with Flex shaft or drill press.

Safety goggles

Patience

Step 1

Mark your sea glass with your entrance and exit hole. Set up your water dish, either an ice cream tub or some form of solid tray with a piece of wood or blu-tac to hold the sea glass on whilst drilling. It will need to be deep enough to allow about a centimetre of water above the piece of glass when you’ve placed it onto the wood/tac and in the water tray . Select your drill bit and attach to your flex shaft/drill press.

Step 2

Whilst keeping your sea glass immersed in water and holding your sea glass, start your drilling.  Go slow to begin with to prevent the drill bit skittering across the surface.  Make sure to move the drill bit up and down to allow water to flush in and out of the hole to remove the drilling debris and to keep the area and the drill bit cool. Overheating can cause the diamonds to come off the drill bit and the material you’re drilling to shatter.

Step 3

Once you’ve drilled about halfway through flip the sea glass over and begin drilling again from the other side where you’ve marked.  If you were to drill straight through there may be a possibility of chipping your exit hole.

Step 4

If you discover the hole needs opening up further use one of our twist drills to do so.