Only me - again
I have been wondering what Commercial Wine & Other Bottles are made from - yep it sounds a silly question & I know they are made from glass (beat some of you to that one :D )
But I would love to know exactly what type of glass, e.g COE rating ???
Any ideas, anyone.
Thanks once again in advance.
Louise
It is around the boro mark, 33 ish.... you can get them tested at Plowden & Thompson I believe.
Thanks Soozintheshed - I thought it was going to be the hard stuff :D
The things I've read have put them in the 80s - you can melt them on a hothead with patience, so I don't think they tend to be that close to boro ???
But... if you want to make beads from them, only use glass from the same bottle in a bead, because there's no guarantee of compatibility, even between ones that are branded the same!
If you smash up the bottle you can pre- heat pieces in the kiln making it easier to melt on the torch.
You can melt boro on a hot head with patience too ;)
Anything on a hot head requires patience
Though if you are desperate to put 2 bottles together there is a test you can do.
Melt the ends of the 2 chunks of glass, push them together then pull into a stringer. if they are incompatible they will pop apart after a short amount of time. If they remain intact for 24 hours you probably have a good chance of them working together. Maybe crush some of one bottle into frit and observe the 5% rule.
Though it is far easier to just never mix bottles.
Certainly no bottle will work with the 104, nor the 90 and 96 rods.
Quote from: Soozintheshed on June 06, 2012, 04:01:31 PM
You can melt boro on a hot head with patience too ;)
Yeeesss... Ok, let me rephrase: you can make bottle beads on a hothead without requiring inhuman amounts of patience ;D Did anyone ever do the boro thing more than once? :D
Apparently Bullseye used to use recycled glass a very long time ago as a base - not anymore. Some thingies here: http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-84743.html
It could be that we have more bottles made from boro-type ranges in the UK, not a clue!
Wow very interesting - may have a play tomorrow - now have another empty ...hic :)
I always thought (wine) bottle glass was made from similar to window/float glass - which is around 83/84 usually? I can remember seeing work by an artist who'd used bottle glass combined with float in fusing.
Of course, float will be harder to melt on a HH than 104 or even Bullseye; float needs around another 40 deg C to fully fuse than BE does.
Hi all, dont reply much these days but felt I needed to here. Commercial wine bottles etc are not boro. Soft glass in the main. I used to join tubes to milk bottles using a soda lime glass probably about the 90 range.
Hope all are well
Ian
Well thats interesting, I stand corrected, I was always told there were more like a pyrex.
I might have a play myself then :)
They seem to be different, I have used a few different ones, but the one I'm using today, a Prosecco bottle is a b****r to melt, :( the champagne bottle I did a couple of months ago didn't seem to be nearly as hard to get melty.
Oh yes, deff soda glass. Good ole cheap glass ;D
Some bottles are definitely harder to full fuse or slump though, does that mean that they could be a different glass? I am thinking Gin bottles and the like, not wine bottles, having said that, cider bottles need a higher temp to slump than wine bottles. I have often wondered about using other glass with them, like a frit mix, but not done so far :-\
Mike Firth has a LOT of glass info on his site - I have referred to his tech notes many times(and yes, bottles are there):
http://mikegigi.com/techspec.htm#GLTEMP
If you have time, browse around. It's a messy website, but a lot of useful info :)
Even bottles from the same manufacturer, even the same drink, can be different, if they've come from a different batch run to produce the bottles.
I've not done many bottles (okay, I did one! and I just picked a random slumping temperature, fortunately for me it, worked) so I haven't seen a difference in various drinks, etc, but I expect shape of bottle, thickness of glass will have a bearing on the temperature required, as well as the glass itself.
Afterall, even using just same thickness Bullseye, different programmes might be required for different depth/shape moulds, so slumping isn't *just* down to the COE of glass
Don't know the CoE as it isn't published (not relevant to bottle makers) but Bottle glass is formulated to be stiff and "set" quickly as that suits the automated manufacturing process. If you only use glass from a single bottle it isn't important BUT if you go for a mix then it's at your own risk..... anything could happen ::)
A while back someone showed some Bombay Sapphire beads with Harvey Bristol Cream dots. I found it impossibl to melt the BS on a HH but must try again with my minor, it's my excuse for drinking gin!
That might have been me. I love playing and seeing what will and will not work.
Just this week I put 2 wine bottles in an old cloth bag then smashed them against a large cement block. The result was loads of sharp shards that are uneven at each end, they're covered in glass dust so I wore gloves and used a paint brush to dust them off. They were hard to turn in the flame, gripping tools can't really hold onto the glass well either, as it's curved.
Made 5 tiny beads so far: tried to add four dots to one bead, two dots have already popped off and I don't trust the other two. Since I like the color of the glass I'll most likely make a few more beads for myself but I doubt I'll be keeping many more wine bottles.
:)
Quote from: Veeka on June 23, 2012, 10:43:13 AM
, gripping tools can't really hold onto the glass well either, as it's curved.
I usually turn one piece of the glass into stringer after preheating in the kiln. Then use the stringer, heated at one end, to retrieve pieces from the hot kiln to melt into beads. Makes life much easier.
Ah Pat! Thank you :) I wondered about using the kiln, it only makes sense really, as it seems to take longer for the bottle glass to melt on a minor burner.
Most commercial bottles are made from soda lime glass. Most of them have a COE in the upper 80's (85-88). That means you may use Bullseye for small decorations in accordance with the 5%-rule. Test the compatibility for every new brand of bottle, they are different.
I love Bombay Sapphire bottles for the nice sky blue and Selters bottles for the rich transparent turquoise. ODOL has a nice white opaque glass and you'll find lots of green and brown bottles. Few beer bottles are cobalt blue and you may find broken plate glass in grey.
You can melt bottle glass with a Hot Head. But it's a very (ehm) meditative working in smaller size than you are used on ea propane-oxy-torch.
To get started I break the bottle and cut larger pieces into strips of about 1cm width. Two of these strips are my handles to hold a third piece. The middle piece is heated untill softned and twisted to get a round gather of glass. This gather is pulled into a 5mm rod, disconnected from one handle and both ends are reattached to a new shard. Now repeat the heating, twisting and pulling untill you have a more than hand long glass rod. Using this (cooled) rod as a handle you can melt other shards without reshaping them into a rod before making the bead. Once you have a rod from one bottle, you can use it to pull a rod from an other color.
Bottle beads look best if they are just one color each. I use shape and texture for decoration or use a combination of different colors in one necklace.
Please do NOT use beach glass. Due to the frosted surfage it WILL pop and explode very fast. The weathered surface may have different melting properties than the inside. Boiling (foaming) and devitrification are common side effects with beach glass.
You can work with the abouve techniques the leftovers of unknown tiffany glass. Please do NOT use opaque colors of KOKOMO opalescent glass. They WILL devitrify and beak from incompatibility with themselves.
Wow Dietmar, what a lot of interesting info. Thank you. Personally I havent done much of the bottle glass melting. We don't really drink so never get sexy bottles!!! I did melt a piece of vase that had belonged to my gran but got broken when my son was little. I saved it all because it is a rich deep aqua colour, but its very very stiff - heading the way of boro but not quite as stiff.
My son did a vid of Prince Rupert's Drops when he was at school using greenhouse glass. That was a little stiffer than 104coe. I've got the bottle of beer he had at his RAF graduation, at some point I will get around to making something with it....