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Glass bottle cutting

 
pollinator
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What's the best, most cost-effective, most useful bottle cutting tool?
I've tired some "no tool" methods like burning twine dipped in alcohol on a bottle fresh out of ice water. And the nicest thing I can say about the method is it's tedious and somewhat successful.
Where I live there is no glass recycling nearby and there are plenty of drinkers! So I'm just looking for any cool thing to do with bottles, especially blue, green, brown, and yellow wine bottles. This could involve cutting them, drilling holes in the bottom to thread onto rebar, smashing them and tumbling the pieces into sea glass, etc.
The tumbling seems the most expensive as you have to get a cement mixer and run it for hours.
The hole in the bottle requires a diamond drill bit.
There are several bottle-cutting gadgets I could order or build.
If you had a fairly unlimited supply of colored wine bottles what would you do with them?
 
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One year for Christmas I was given a bottle cutting kit.  It only cut bottles in half Like these:

https://www.wikihow.com/Cut-a-Glass-Bottle

https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Cut-Glass-Bottles/

I feel that to cut a hole in the bottle like in the picture you posted, it will take some sort of special knowledge.

Just for fun, I would love to know how that is done.

I hope someone on the forum knows how to do that.

 
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A wet tile saw is the most effective way to cut bottles,my opinion.
Chris Notap's YT channel has a good video on using low cost hole saws to drill openings into glass bottles.

Tumbling glass into gravel and sand appeals to me.
The best reason to build your own tumbler is price, the second best reason is to use a DC motor and run it it off of solar pv.
A clothes dryer has most of of what you need, all of what you need if you want to power it by AC.

 
pollinator
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I have 3 on my glass list that way.  

One comes out of an article on mud and glass bottle walls that talked about how the glass if angle properly carried the heat deeper into the wall.  This one left me wanting to try a concrete floor with a glass mosaic in it such that the glass angled to match winter sun at noon in say early Feb.  If the bottles were cut so that the pieces reached 2 inches to 4 inches into the concrete with the glass acting as a light pipe to carry the light and heat down inside.  Build leaves etc by stacking a bunch of layers of semi circular sections of bottle side by side.  Build sand from the same colors glass to put in the concrete to glue parts together.  With 4 or 5 colors of glass some mosaic should be possible.  Once the surface is created then go back with a concrete grinder to level everything perfectly smooth.  Alternate here is simply build the aggregate out of colored glass (gravel, sand) and make the same concrete mosaic.  If this isn't workable would a floor made mostly out of a brown bottle aggregate along with concrete colorant and concrete be a good solar absorber floor?

Second one comes out of several places I would like to try vacuum insulated glass floats or light pipes.  Cut 2 necks off and them heat and pressure weld the bottle bottom halves together.  Since they were incredibly hot when fused they would be at decent vacuum inside and most should stay that way for decades or centuries.  Would like to know the "you" factor for such a structure as the glass would be conductive but lower cross section while the vacuum in the middle would insulate like crazy.  Better yet would be if I could find a way to mirror coat the inside of the bottle at the same time.  Maybe inductively heat a small Aluminum fragment while the glass is still hot?  I know that quart halogen builds do a good mirroring of the bulb inside if they take a big voltage spike,

Third is glass blocks or bricks out of a solar kiln.

Now as for tumbling glass growing up a family friend had a big wide tire with paddles both outside and inside that ran in an irrigation ditch down a fairly steep hill.  One bead of the tire was permanently screwed to piece of plywood circle with and inner tub liner over it inside.  The plywood was anchored to a pipe axle in the middle.  The other side the plywood circle was in 2 halves and simply clamped to the axle and bolted to the bead on that side in a few places.  The water turned the tire with the exterior paddles and the inside paddles cause the rocks to actually tumble.  This would tumble rocks nearly basket ball in size.  Something similar would likely work for glass too.
 
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I just score them heat a pan of boiling/simmering water and have another pan full of cold ice water. I set the bottle in the hot for about 30 seconds than dip it into the cold and it will separate nicely. I use duct tape to connect two bottoms to make glass bricks that I plan on using for windows in outdoor projects.
 
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Melissa Ferrin wrote: Where I live there is no glass recycling nearby and there are plenty of drinkers! So I'm just looking for any cool thing to do with bottles, especially blue, green, brown, and yellow wine bottles.



Wine bottles can be so beautiful.  I've collected quite a few and intend to turn them into glass funnels by cutting off the solid end and inverting them. They should work well for preserves and other hot, acidic instead of plastic or metal funnels.

Thanks for asking about the best glass cutting tools - great question.
 
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Don't know if it really works, but there's one of these for free on the local UsedAnywhere.

 
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