Making Beautiful Glass Beads

 We went to a glass bead "factory" outside of Accra, Ghana, where they make beautiful glass bead bracelets and necklaces.  This pictures show their raw materials which are empty glass bottles which they recycle.

 They grind the bottles into powder and pour them into molds and fire them in a wood-fired oven.  They get the temperature up to 800 degrees.

 You can't see it very well in this picture, but there is liquid glass in the black mold.

And here is the beautiful finished product.  Glass bead bracelets of all different colors.