At the beginning of the summer, I decided to take up yet another hobby; luckily this time though, it is related to others I have, not too time consuming, and best of all, cheap: making guitar slides out of wine bottle necks. All it takes is a bottle scorer and wine bottles. I got my scorer at Hobby Lobby, but it is also available on Amazon.
It's simple to use as long as you actually follow the directions. I actually did it a bit differently than the directions specified, but I still employed the same principles.
First, a little bit of science and clarification: whenever somebody talks about "cutting" glass, it is almost guaranteed that they are not actually cutting it. More often than not, it is actually controlled breaking: the way "cutting" glass works is by making a very fine score; the finer the score, the cleaner the "cut" or separation. When cutting a pane of glass for something like a window, a line is usually scribed along a straightedge, and the excess piece is carefully tapped until it cleanly breaks off. Bottlenecks are a little different though: since they are round, you obviously can't use a straightedge, and tapping the glass (though sometimes used) will almost always end with an at least somewhat jagged edge. What is needed then, is a way to score the glass, and make it want to crack, but in a more controlled manner.
Solving the problem of how to score the glass is fairly simple; all you need is a way to make a straight score on a pivot, which is the purpose of the bottle scorer.
Actually getting the glass to break cleanly is a little trickier. Enter thermal shock: a way to break the glass without hitting it.
Basically, thermal shock will often cause stuff to crack due to uneven heating, and glass is especially susceptible to it. All that is needed is a source of high temperature, and a source of low temperature. These can range from candles to burning string soaked with lighter fluid to blowtorches to hot water from tap, likewise sticking stuff in a freezer to ice to cold water from the tap. I used the combination of a hot water kettle and cold water from the tap.
Now that I've explained the basic science behind it, here's the process:
The first step is to line the scorer up perpendicular to the glass. Next I went around once with the scorer, going as lightly as possible while still making a score. The next step is to run it under boiling water and cold water over the score until it finally breaks. At this point, all it needs is some sanding of the edges to break the very sharp corners.
I think the rest of the bottle looks really cool, and I always feel like it has to be good for "something," but I haven't quite figured out what that something is yet.
Here is the finished product:
First, a little bit of science and clarification: whenever somebody talks about "cutting" glass, it is almost guaranteed that they are not actually cutting it. More often than not, it is actually controlled breaking: the way "cutting" glass works is by making a very fine score; the finer the score, the cleaner the "cut" or separation. When cutting a pane of glass for something like a window, a line is usually scribed along a straightedge, and the excess piece is carefully tapped until it cleanly breaks off. Bottlenecks are a little different though: since they are round, you obviously can't use a straightedge, and tapping the glass (though sometimes used) will almost always end with an at least somewhat jagged edge. What is needed then, is a way to score the glass, and make it want to crack, but in a more controlled manner.
Solving the problem of how to score the glass is fairly simple; all you need is a way to make a straight score on a pivot, which is the purpose of the bottle scorer.
Actually getting the glass to break cleanly is a little trickier. Enter thermal shock: a way to break the glass without hitting it.Basically, thermal shock will often cause stuff to crack due to uneven heating, and glass is especially susceptible to it. All that is needed is a source of high temperature, and a source of low temperature. These can range from candles to burning string soaked with lighter fluid to blowtorches to hot water from tap, likewise sticking stuff in a freezer to ice to cold water from the tap. I used the combination of a hot water kettle and cold water from the tap.
Now that I've explained the basic science behind it, here's the process:
The first step is to line the scorer up perpendicular to the glass. Next I went around once with the scorer, going as lightly as possible while still making a score. The next step is to run it under boiling water and cold water over the score until it finally breaks. At this point, all it needs is some sanding of the edges to break the very sharp corners.I think the rest of the bottle looks really cool, and I always feel like it has to be good for "something," but I haven't quite figured out what that something is yet.
Here is the finished product:
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