Cutting Wine and Beer Bottles Word Text

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CUTTING WINE AND BEER BOTTLES Double your fun by cutting off those empty beer and wine bottles to make drinking glasses. Making them is easy with the fixtures I describe and is well within the capabilities of the beginning glass worker or hobbyist. Although any beverage bottle can be made into a usable drinking glass, look for the bottles that have the ceramic painted label. These labels are fired on at a high temperature and will not be affected by any glassblowing operations. They will remain on the glass when the cut edge is fire polished. Soak off any paper labels prior to cutting the necks off and make sure that the inside of the bottle is drained dry. Place the bottles overnight in a bucket of water, and by morning the labels are easy to remove. Beer bottles make excellent juice glasses and wine bottles are ideal for iced tea and water, as they hold a lot of ice. If we could get people to recycle even a fraction of the bottles thrown away today, it would become a worthwhile project! Cutting the necks off becomes easy when you construct a cutting fixture to the dimensions I describe. It can be cut from a foot square piece of 1/2" plywood and a couple feet of 1" x 2" stock and a hinge. It is adjustable and will take any beer or wine bottle. I put mine together with brads and glue. You can use wood screws if you like. I must confess that as a carpenter, I make a good glassblower, but it’s simple and it works!

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Cutting Wine and Beer Bottles Word instructions.

Transcript of Cutting Wine and Beer Bottles Word Text

Page 1: Cutting Wine and Beer Bottles Word Text

CUTTING WINE AND BEER BOTTLES

Double your fun by cutting off those empty beer and wine bottles to make drinking glasses. Making them is easy with the fixtures I describe and is well within the capabilities of the beginning glass worker or hobbyist.

Although any beverage bottle can be made into a usable drinking glass, look for the bottles that have the ceramic painted label. These labels are fired on at a high temperature and will not be affected by any glassblowing operations. They will remain on the glass when the cut edge is fire polished. Soak off any paper labels prior to cutting the necks off and make sure that the inside of the bottle is drained dry. Place the bottles overnight in a bucket of water, and by morning the labels are easy to remove. Beer bottles make excellent juice glasses and wine bottles are ideal for iced tea and water, as they hold a lot of ice. If we could get people to recycle even a fraction of the bottles thrown away today, it would become a worthwhile project!

Cutting the necks off becomes easy when you construct a cutting fixture to the dimensions I describe. It can be cut from a foot square piece of 1/2" plywood and a couple feet of 1" x 2" stock and a hinge. It is adjustable and will take any beer or wine bottle. I put mine together with brads and glue. You can use wood screws if you like. I must confess that as a carpenter, I make a good glassblower, but it’s simple and it works!

This fixture uses a glass cutter of the “Red Devil” type for cutting sheet glass and can be purchased in a hardware store. If it has a ball at the end of the handle, it can be removed with a sharp blow of a hammer. Insert the cutter through a 3/8 inch hole drilled in the 1"

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x 2" handle directly above the “V” trough you made for the bottles. Making a good seal from the metal cutter to wood is accomplished with a glue gun, filling the void around the cutter and the wood with hot glue. Use a scrap of the 1/2" plywood for a stop against the bottle bottoms, so that the cut bottles will be of the same height.

Using the cutting fixture is simple. Place the bottle in the trough against the stop, bring the handle down until the cutter is against the bottle. Grasp the handle firmly, holding it against the front support. Now put pressure on the cutting wheel, rotating the bottle against the wheel. Go either direction, scoring the bottle all the way around. Do not retrace the cut a second time. The ground glass in the cut will destroy the cutting wheel in no time at all if you do. One score is sufficient. Try rotating the bottles in both directions, you will find that one direction works better for you. I like to mark a number of bottles at a time and fire polish them in batches also.

The cutting wheel will last longer if you keep it lubricated with kerosene or 3-in-One® oil.

To cut and fire polish the bottles, ideally, you would need a glassblowing lathe. I find that there is a practical substitute for a lathe sitting in nearly every home. I use my old record player. E-Bay is a good source of record players also. They rotate at four speeds and is rugged enough to support the bottles during cracking the necks off and fire polishing as well. I cut a six inch plywood square on my table saw and drilled a hole in the center to accommodate the center post of the record player. I didn’t want to saw off the center post of the record player, so I built up the plywood disc with 1/2" plywood blocks until the center post no longer protruded above the disc. The speed and weights required allows you to merely set the plywood disc on the player turntable, without needing to attach it permanently. In case a bottle breaks during fire polishing, the plywood disc also prevents hot chips from burning up your record player. To place plywood wedges on the disc to locate the bottles at the center of the disc, I placed a bottle on the disc, started rotation, and bumped the bottle until it ran on center. Then glueing one edge of the small triangles, I placed them in four places, barely touching the bottle. When the glue dried, centering the bottle was no longer necessary, the bottles just drop into the center of this fixture.

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When your record player is modified, place a bottle (already scored) in the plywood holder. Start the player at 45 RPM. Light your small propane torch (shown on the yellow cylinder above) and adjust if for a small, intense flame about 1/2 of an inch long. You can use either the propane in the blue cylinder or the MAPP gas in the yellow cylinder. Either gas works, the MAPP gas is a little hotter. Direct the flame against the bottle, tangentially across the surface of the bottle, with the tip of the flame just touching the score line. Hold the flame very steady and concentrate on heating only on the score line. It takes only about fifteen seconds or so of heating the glass at the score line to induce sufficient strain to crack the glass. Some bottles are heavier than others and require a longer heating time. Once the crack occurs, stop heating and the crack will progress along the score line until it completely encircles the bottle. Use a drill or other metal rod to tap the neck of the bottle to remove the neck. Practice will sharpen your techniques. Keep in mind the fact that you want to use as little heat as you can to cut the bottle off, just enough, no more. You will get so that you can predict the amount of heating necessary and remove the flame a second before the CRACK that happens when the two pieces separate.

A larger torch tip is used to fire polish the cut edges, so cut the bottles in batches and you will not have to change torch tips as often. I use a “Hush” tip, 3/8 inch for fire polishing.

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Wear your Didymium safety glasses during all cutting and heating operations.

See Video for process

Place the cut bottle back on the record player and center it up so it rotates evenly. Use the National torch with the Hush, 3/8" tip to preheat the bottle. Start with a yellow flame, heating the top inch of the bottle. Direct your flame across the edge of the bottle and at one side. Add oxygen gradually, until the carbon deposited from the yellow flame is burned off. Adjust your torch so that you get a strong blue flame about four inches long. Change the speed of rotation from 33 to 16 RPM for fire polishing. Heat the cut edge until it flows and the edge rounds off. When the edge is fire polished all around, heat it off using a softer flame directed against the last 3/4 inch of the top of the bottle. Burn off the carbon about an inch from the end. Take your time, you want to relieve the sharp strain left from the fire polishing operation. Gradually reduce the oxygen in your flame and continue heating for about 30 seconds, at which time the end of the bottle will get a rich coat of carbon from the flame. This carbon deposit actually helps slow down the cooling of the glass and it indicates that you have flame annealed in the proper manner. Remove the bottle from the record player and place it in a draft-free place to cool. If, after cooling, a circular crack results near the fire polished surface, that indicates that you rushed the flame annealing. You should increase the cooling down time when this happens. Champagne bottles are particularly heavy and really should be oven annealed after fire polishing. The yield rate on them is very low, but the thinner bottles average 80 percent yield. Keep in mind that you are working a soft glass and very uneven at that, so accept the losses in breakage. Oven annealing the finished glasses is preferred, of course, but flame annealing in some cases is sufficient.