We’ve been wanting new drinking glasses lately, especially since they have been on display with our open shelving. But we weren’t excited about anything that was out there for sale. As I was recycling about a dozen glass sparkling water bottles, the thought struck me that there had to be a way to remove the tops and use them as drinking glasses. They would have a nice hand-made feeling which would go very well in our house…and they would be free!
After much Googling, I was quite confident that I could do it. According to many tutorials out there, it was as simple as:
1. Soaking some yarn in nail polish remover
2. Wrapping the yarn around the bottle where you want it to break
3. Lighting the yarn on fire
4. Submerging the bottle into cold water where the two halves separate
Easy peasy.
Of course, reading that from three sources wasn’t enough, so I continued the research and found a “better way” to do it with a glass cutter. You’d just score the bottle with a glass cutting wheel, then alternate running hot water and cold water over the score. The top should just pop right off.
So, I picked up a glass cutter (only a few dollars at the home improvement store) and some nail polish remover.
I was seriously excited about this project: it was going to involve fire and breaking glasses…and in the end, we’d have free and cool glassware.
After 3 failed attempts of what the people of YouTube made look like a very easy project, I finally got one bottle to split. But it was a very wonky split. It didn’t have any cracks that would make it dangerous, so I just sanded the edges down and tried again. Another 3 times. Only one more broke and it was more of a “fracture in every direction” than a nice clean split.
I put down the fire and cleaned up before getting frustrated. But I was still determined, so I kept saving the sparkling water bottles to try again.
And I tried again yesterday.
This time, I tried 5 before finally getting one to split. And it was a nasty, fractured-in-every-direction break. I tried both flaming yarn and glass-cutter methods, and made up my own too, which consisted of: slowly rotating the glass over a candle flame and holding an ice cube on the glass on the section that just came out of the fire. It didn’t work either.
Normally, I would have given up, but this has just gone too far and now I’m determined. It might take another year, but I will get this figured out and make our own reclaimed drinking glasses. Have any of you ever tried this? Any thoughts about why it’s failing so badly?
PS: Speaking of reclaimed glass, my sister and her husband have opened an online candle shop, Johnston Candles. They are selling responsible, natural soy-wax candles in reclaimed glassware. They have lots of happy customers and their business is growing fast!
It looks like you’re using acrylic yarn, which won’t burn very well. From the photos, it’s melting a bit and not really catching fire evenly Try cotton string, which will soak up far more nail polish remover, and burn much better. My bet from the wonky breaks and the cracking is that it’s not heating evenly, and the heat isn’t focused enough to give it a good breaking spot.
Try scoring the bottle first, which will give it a weak point to break from – then wrap the yarn over the score line, pour polish remover to soak it, light on fire, wait a few moments until the fire has really consumed the yarn, then plunge into ice water. Essentially you’re trying to shock the glass into splitting, so you need to try to get it to the extremes in hot and cold as quickly and safely as possible.
Thanks for the tips, Abbe! I’ll try again when I get enough bottles and post a follow-up. 🙂
I can’t wait until you figure it out… hopefully it doesn’t take a year. 🙂
Me too…mostly because I don’t want the bottles sitting under the sink for that long.
I hope you crack it 😀
Do you still have to sand the egde even after breaking the bottle as it should? Because drinking from a glass broken like that sound bit scary and sharp, but maybe I’m just a wimp.
Haha! 🙂 I was really surprised that they actually aren’t sharp at all when they break properly. But, sanding gives it the nice, round edge like glasses have.
You want to try acetone, not just nail polish remover, which has acetone in it. And cotton thread, instead of acrylic. Should clear up your issues.