Trash to Treasure
W. J. Wheeler
Glass Technician
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin

There are numerous ways to scribe a cut line on the bottles. One can make a fixture to hold the bottles while rotated engaging a hardware store type glass cutter. (Figure 2) The process works fine, but I have found that by making a cut mark with a file or carbide knife about an inch long produces as good a cut edge as completely encircling the bottle with a scribed cut line. Being molded, the bottles are of a rather poor quality regarding wall thickness, and the cut edge produced in cracking the neck off will respond to the difference in the thickness in the glass in the walls of the bottle. They are not your usual glass tubing quality. It is a case of getting as good a cut as you can get. If the cut is not perfectly square, some leeway is possible to correct it with a flat carbon or rod on the fired edge while molten.

A scribed mark about an inch long around the neck of the bottle is sufficient to start the crack to remove the neck. Using the pictured fixture insures constant lengths of the glasses when a wood block is clamped to the V holding the bottle. The ball at the end of the glass cutter is removed to insert in the hole in the lever. Use regular sheet glass cutting techniques to scribe the neck, creating a single mark. Never go over the scribed mark, and your cutter will last for many operations.

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