The Art and Meditation of Drilling Sea Glass

2009-05-20T17:08:00-05:00

ZZZZzz…….zzzzzZZZZZZZZZ...Zzz.......ZZZZZZZzzz….Z.

Oh, the sound of drilling sea glass. Do you hear it?

That's actually the sound of me tearing my hair out the first few times I tried to drill sea glass. Before I launch into this story, I must give you some background on how I came to this point in my life (of meditative drilling, I mean).

At work one day a few months ago, a colleague showed me a beautiful sea glass bracelet she had made for herself. I immediately fell in love with the frosty gems. Shortly thereafter, I had some kind of epiphany of wanting to start my own jewelry line, and GhostShip was immediately born.

I found my first piece of gem quality sea glass while walking the beach one morning with my dog, wearing my down parka and trudging in the sand in my winter ski boots. What a thrill it was to carry my precious ziplock bag of treasures home, to sort them by color and shape, and then to finally sit down and try drilling into these weathered, reclaimed beauties.

Of course, like all good and eager novice drillers, my drill speed was too high, I didn't use enough lubricant, I wore out many good tips very fast, and broke many precious pieces from pressing too hard. I finally got the hang of it, but thought to myself, "This is torture! WHEN is this going to be over so I can get on to the fun part of putting the jewelry design together?"

I would dread the times when I needed to drill a batch of glass for my designs that week — it was so tedious and boring. I wondered why any sane person would want to spend any amount of time hearing what, at the time, reminded me of sitting in the dentist's chair. That unforgettable, spine-rattling drill noise twanged on my nerves like a very out of tune violin. Fun stuff indeed.

It was at that time when my lovely and snuffly bulldog, Bodhi, reminded me of life's very important lesson. I needed to slow down and smell the roses (or in his case, eat the roses…as we had just come back from a very slow and long walk with many unscheduled stops to chomp on grass, flowers, tree bark…but I digress).

After thoroughly wiping down his wrinkly dog suit, I sat down for dreaded drilling session. But this time, it was different.

I picked up the piece of sea glass in front of me, and lovingly felt its frosty smooth surface, its cooling touch. As I started to bite into it, I felt the calming, massaging buzz of the drill in my hand. I noticed the milky white liquid well up from inside the drill hole. I dipped my drill tip and stone into the cool ice-cube filled cups I had placed in front of me and watched the milky dust swirl away in the water. I became aware of every movement, every detail of what I was doing, and soon fell into a trance of drilling, dipping, swishing. Drilling, dipping, swishing. My mind started to clear and before I knew it, I was lost in this meditative world.

Who knew it could be this relaxing? Was I losing my mind? Actually I was training my mind.

In Buddhism, it's all about training your mind to become free from the cycle of suffering so that you can be a more compassionate and loving person. It's all about letting go. I had to let go of the frustration and impatience I was feeling whenever I drilled. Needless to say, I also discovered new and helpful techniques during this "transition" period.

For instance, I always drilled from one side, and would jump out of my chair as the drill bit finally pierced the other side of the glass, scaring me out of my skin (and Bodhi's) every time! I'm telling you, it's very difficult to put a dog suit back on a bulldog…have you ever tried?

Well, I learned to drill a little from each end, flipping the stone over and over, and finally meeting in the middle for a very calm and, well, civilized breakthrough. Also, I went down at least a couple of speeds on my drill, realizing that having the drill go faster was not going to drill my hole any faster. In fact, it was just the opposite. I also didn’t get so much buildup and heat on my point, which made my diamond points last so much longer.

In the end, I realized that something I'd thought was a nuisance and a chore, actually turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, relaxing things to do in the whole process of making jewelry.

The middle path: Who would have guessed? After all, it's really mind over matter, eh?

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The Art and Meditation of Drilling Sea Glass