Cutting and Grinding Wine Bottles into Drinking Glasses

you may have seen some of our earlier videos on how to cut a wine bottle and make a drinking glass out of it we're going to do another quick video of this just to show you some of the techniques the most important thing you can possibly do is get a nice clean cut or break out of your bottle once we get to the grinding and polishing process that is involved there are a lot of techniques that are going to be happening over there but the first thing you really want to do is get as nice and clean a cut or break from your bottle as you possibly can the more chips that you have from your saw cut or your break the longer you're going to spend on your grinding discs the faster you're going to wear them out and the less efficient you will be making drinking glasses or candle holders out of wine bottles is all about how efficient you can be in producing these to get the most money out of the blade a lot of people get nervous about using a diamond saw I'm going to turn this on really fast and I'll show you why you really shouldn't be nervous diamonds are only going to cut hard things your skin is not hard a label on a bottle is not hard so the blade will have a really hard time with those so you don't have to be nervous about being in and near the blade when you're cutting your wine bottle let me show you why now you can see our blades running I've got water coming and you can see I can touch the blade now I don't want to keep my fingers on there because you can't can burn but the blade is not going to cut you so it will not hurt your skin so there's very little need to be afraid of this blade now one of the reasons you'll want to try and remove labels from your bottles beforehand is that the blades going to have a really hard time cutting through a label because a label is soft it'll go through the glass quite nicely but it's gonna have a harder time with the label and you'll see that when I start cutting now I've put my little block here to give me something to rest my bottle against and I'll West it against my backstop so I'll get as even and straight a cut as possible so I'll have to do very little grinding when I get to our grinding discs to keep this flat and level now if you're all over the place with your bottle and you don't have a backstop here or here you can cut a very odd angle on your bottle and that's going to spend a lot more time on the grinder getting it level your saw cut is important your break is important get it as clean as you can get it as straight as you can and you'll spend less time on your grinder let's cut through this bottle the biggest thing to remember is to let the blade do the work you don't want to rush the blade the diamonds will do the cutting for you if you put too much pressure on the blade you can end up making chips in your glass or breaking the glass so take your time let the blade do the work you'll see I got a little chip out of my bottle here and that's going to take some extra work on my grinding disk that was mainly because it had a hard time getting through the label here on the end like I said diamonds do not want to go sooth all soft things so it a hard time cutting through the label and it ended up chipping out my bottle on the back end now you'll see on the front end very little chipping so it'll be very easy to work with this is going to take a little bit extra time on my grinder which is a good reason to remove your labels ahead of time after our saw cuts we're going to start using this 12-inch Covington grinder to grind down our bottles rim to give it a nice surface and move it all the way to polish so it turns back into clear glass we're also going to use the grinder with some domes and cones to work the interior bevel and an exterior bevel on this it's just a slight bevel to take the sharp feeling edge off of it so it's comfortable on the lips as a drinking glass you'll find out how quickly and efficiently this can be done so let's jump right into how they use this grinder the first disk I'm going to start with on our 12 inch grinder is a 140 grit disc you can start with a 100 grit disc if you like if you really need to take a lot of material off but it can sometimes cause a lot of excess edge chipping that you don't really need out of your glass so 140 grit is a good choice this is a fairly worn in 140 grit so it's going to be a little bit slower than a brand new 140 grit but we simply put this on our grinder we have a 1 inch plug in the middle of our grinder so we can line up our Center hole and the disc fits down magnetically on top of the grinder once the disc is down we turn our grinder on you can see it starts rotating our diamond disk we have an external water feed here we want to put enough water onto the disk to get it nice and wet at first and then we want to lower our water usage doesn't require a lot of water on these diamond discs just enough to flush off the ground glass as we're working on our drinking glasses now here's our drinking glass that we did our saw cut on you can see our larger chips there from where our labels were we're add a little bit of a hard time I've torn the labels down a little bit because our grinding disk will have a hard time with soft material as well so you do want to take your labels off your bottles first you can see our saw cut which is a little rough what I'll end up doing is we're going to go straight down onto this disc and we're going to move from the center to the edge back and forth in order to utilize the entire surface of the disc as much as possible to keep it wearing evenly every so often I will turn a quarter turn when I'm grinding this is going to keep my surface level and try and keep my drinking glass level so let's start applying pressure downward onto the disc and moving back and forth from the center to the edge now make a quarter turn on my bottle again center to the edge back and forth on the disk to keep our disc wearing evenly another quarter turn another quarter turn the reason I make these quarter turns is that whether you realize it or not you are going to be applying unequal pressure to this glass as you grind it stopping every so often and moving the glass a quarter turn you will keep an even pressure on the glass and keep the realm' level so you can see we've already ground down past any of that excess chipping from our saw blade so my edge is looking quite nice right now and that's our first step our second step is to use a 270 grit disc this is still an electroplated diamond disc but it's a finer grit than the 140 grit disc so it will give an even finer finish on the surface of the glass same technique fit it over our Center plug now you can see here on our 140 grit it's a fairly rough surface on the rim of the glass still now I've removed all the chips there are no deep chips in my glass anymore and that's really the purpose of the 140 grit disc but it does leave a very frosted appearance on the rim of the glass this is where the next few steps are going to come in the 270 grit disc will remove these and make these even finer and then our smoothing pad will make them even finer still again we'll start our machine in a fair amount of water on our disk then lower the water usage the finer your grit disks go the less water you'll actually need right now I've just got a steady drip going on this 270 grit I'll use the same technique again we're going to go straight down go back and forth on our disk every so often making a quarter turn now I won't need to stay on this disk nearly as long as I did the 140 grit disc I needed to be on the 140 grit disc a little bit longer to remove that larger chip if you don't have any larger chips in there each step will take significantly less time that's probably more than enough time on the 270 grit disc to get this surface down to a finer appearance let's take a look this is a bottle that I've done on the 140 grit disc still pretty frosted looking you can see some much deeper scratches in there this is the bottle we just finished on our 270 grit disc you can see while it's still frosty you can start to see it's a much finer surface appearance it's almost getting darker because the color of the glass is starting to show through the grinding marks from the 270 grit so it's a much finer surface our next few steps will take this even further after our 270 grit disc before we move to our pre polished 325 grit disc we're going to do the interior bevel of the glass and in the coming 10 grand you'll notice we have our little center plug here we have a spanner wrench that can remove this once your Center plug is out we have this five eights 11 male-to-male adapter that fits into the middle of this grinder now this adapter will allow you to use different types of material on this grinder the first thing I'm going to show you is our resin dome now this is a resin bonded diamond material so there's about roughly 1/8 inch of diamond in this dome with the 5/8 11-mile Kamel adapter in the middle of our machine we can screw this dome on to the middle of our grinder now the dome will give us the ability to make an interior bevel on the inside of our glass right now it's got a very sharp feeling edge now it won't cut you you can run your finger on the inside of that now that we have ground down this rim the inside or the outside of this glass will not cut you but it does feel odd it feels very very sharp and if someone we're drinking out of this it would feel very uncomfortable on their lips like they're about to be even though they aren't so what we'll do is create a small bevel on the interior of this lip to try and make it more comfortable the dome does an excellent job of this we have a separate valve on the Cummington grinder that allows water to come through the middle of this dome you can see it bubbling up here now that I've opened up the valve doesn't require much I'm going to take that down a little bit you can still see the water coming through now I'm going to turn on my grinder and my dome gets spinning make sure it gets nice and wet what I'll do is I'll take my glass we're going to put it right down on the dome I'm not putting it hard not jamming it on there but you've got the ability to move it back and forth around this dome you want to go in the opposite direction that your grinder is spinning I still feel a sharp edge on there back and forth a little bit it's not unusual for it to make a strange sound like it's grabbing if it does that all the time you probably are setting up a harmonic in the glass and you want to remove it but just move it around on the dome make sure to try and use the entire surface of the dome just like we use the entire surface of the disks now the one thing you'll notice on these is that bottles are not perfectly round so as we use it on our dome it's not going to hit every spot in there now you may be able to see a little bit of the bevel that is created it's a little bit shinier because our rim is still are 270 grit and our bevel is a 325 grit resin so our bevel is a little bit shinier in there and you can see it as I travel around the lights reflecting off of it and we'll get to certain points on our glass where it's not really hitting a bevel that's because the glass isn't fully round so I've got a spot right here our bevel starts here but it's not hitting right here on our dome so I don't have a bevel here it still feels a little sharp so what I'll do is I'll put this down on our dome again and I'll just hit this one spot instead of putting the glass all the way onto the dome I'm just going to put this one area onto the dome so as I do that I'm basically just going to move up and down the dome now I'm not contacting the glass over here I'm just hitting this one spot that our dome didn't get to before because our glass is not perfectly round so I'm just moving it up and down on the dome just enough to hit that one spot that feels pretty good now if I've missed it on one side it's probably missed it on the other so I'm going to hit that spot real fast to the diamond domes are very quick and efficient at making these interior bevels and that feels really good that no longer has a sharp feeling to it feels very good on my finger which means it'll be very good on the lips if you try and make this as a drinking glass another option we have for doing the interior bevel on your glasses is the resin diamond cones they work in the same ways our domes they screw right onto this adapter you get just enough water to flow on the dome now the cones are a little bit different from the domes you cannot Jam your glass directly on here it'll grab the glass and probably break it and if you have a larger glass it's really not going to fit on these cones as well so with this with the cone you actually have to move up and down the cone and rotate your glass so you're only contacting one point on the interior of a glass at one time you do want to try and move up and down the cone to try and utilize the entire surface of the cone so you don't dig a channel into the resin if you stay in one spot you're going to dig a groove into the resin into the cone you're going to reduce the lifespan of your cone considerably so you do want to try and use as much of the cone surface as you possibly can while you're doing this but it's just an up-and-down motion rotating your glass the whole time cones are very efficient when you're doing glasses that are not round so you're doing different types of liquor bottles that have square bottles or have corners to them the cones going to be much better at getting into those areas than the dome the dome is really not going to work on a square bottle you're going to have to use a cone for square bottles and the dome for round bottles but you can use the cone for round bottles as well it just takes a little bit longer you know I've already made a really nice interior bubble with that cone our third disc is our 325 grit resin bonded disc now this one's fairly worn in the new ones are really nice and brown you can see we've used this one quite a bit so it's nice and broken in you can see some ground glass building up along the edge of the disc and it's not quite as deep maroonish brown as it used to be the same technique applies you just Center it over your Center plug you can see I've replaced our solid plugg I'm going to turn on our grinder same process applies we'll turn out a little bit of extra water to make sure our disc is nice and wet now we're going to reduce our water flow to nothing but a nice drip the same process applies as well we're going to put our glass down we're going to move Center to edge utilizing as much of the disc as possible make our quarter turns and as you can see each step takes less and less time that's probably good enough now again you'll see the difference here on the left side this is our 270 grit you can see it's still quite frosty compared to our now 325 grit smoothing pad which is much cleaner it's almost got a sheen to it you can almost see the color of the glass through this again there's very little white now it does have a little haze to it it's got a nice Sheen this is a great surface to leave your glasses at if you're going to make candle holders out of them once you have the candle in here and it's lit the light will transmit up the side and make the rim glow so it's really nice step to leave if you're making candle holders you're making drinking glasses we generally suggest moving this one step further and get it fully polished now that we have our rim work to a pre polish and we have our interior bevel that we've done with our dome we need to do our exterior bevel now the easiest thing to do is to do it here on the smoothing pad and all you need to do is simply roll your glass along the smoothing path you don't need to put a whole lot of pressure on this let the pad do the work because you don't want to dig a channel into your resin pad or scrape the top of the pad off let the diamond disk do the work but I'm still going center to edge on the disk to try and utilize the full surface of the disk as much as possible a few times around and I've got a really nice bevel on there doesn't feel sharp at all anymore and I'm done with this step when it comes to polishing on the flat lap we have two different options really this is a synthetic felt pad you see all these tiny little holes in it these little perforations we also carry a pack of an LP 66 that's an extruded urethane material either one of these will utilize cerium oxide for the polishing cerium oxide is a powder comes in a powder form what you end up doing is mixing the powder with water generally we mix it about one part cerium to two parts water in a squirt bottle like this just shake it up to get it in suspension and then you use it on your pad to accomplish your polish I'll show you how that's done as with all the other disks you line it up with your center plug magnetically seals down on your pad we'll turn on our grinder the same process applies with this we're going to put some extra water on here just to moisten our pad and get it wet once our pad is wet we're going to reduce our water flow again just so our pad stays nice and moist you can see on my fingertips I've got a little bit of cerium already built up on this pad so it's already coming off on my fingers as well work now with our electroplated grits when we were working our bottle we were moving back and forth Center to edge in a very controlled pattern making quarter turns back and forth so that we maintained a very level surface and a very consistent grind across the lip of the glass and when you get to a polishing stage you actually want to change that routine a little bit you want to have a very random pattern on this that will polish up this area nice and fast because you'll always be changing directions on the polish pad the easiest way to achieve this is by working your glass in the opposite direction that your disc is running this disc is currently running clockwise so I'm going to take our glass and I'm going to go counterclockwise around this disc now before I start I take a little bit of cerium squirt it into the middle of our pad then we're going to get going now just like our electroplated diamond discs I'm going to try and utilize the entire surface of my polish pad so I'm moving from the interior of the pad to the outside of the pad if I go slower you can see the routine that I'm doing start in the center move out to the edge go back to the center move out to the edge I'm applying pressure on this pad and I'm moving fairly quickly round and around this is constantly changing the direction of the polish every so often you can pick up your glass rotate it 180 degrees and keep going just like on our diamond discs you can unintentionally provide pressure in one point over another so rotating your glass every so often is a very good idea and will help accomplish the Polish even faster most of the time when you get to the point of wanting to turn your glass it's a good time to squirt a little bit more cerium onto your pad before long your polish pad will actually charge up with plenty of cerium and you won't have to add as much to accomplish the Polish when you first start polishing will take a little bit longer because your diamond disks are newer and they're more aggressive and your polish pad is new and hasn't really been charged up with cerium yet so we've gone about a couple of minutes we're going to take a look and see what this looks like you can see that is already polished we've got a nice clear glass rim on there it's a little bit of cerium and towel built up on there sorry but you can see that's a nice clean polish clear glass again you can see all the way through so very pretty now our interior bevels you can see them a little bit more now because that is a 325 grit on the dome but since it is a very slight bevel just to take that sharp edge off there hardly noticeable now if you really wanted to clean it up all the way you can polish the exterior and interior bevel you can policy exterior bevel on your polish pad same routine going from center to the edge back and forth all the way around your bottle now you want to stay in one particular area back and forth because polishing will take a little bit longer than grinding and you want to make sure you hit the same areas for a fair amount of time so instead of just rolling it all the way like this you're staying in one particular spot and just rocking it back and forth making sure to utilize the entire pad though you don't want to dig a channel into your pads and get them replaced sooner than you need to and you can see that's dug up a lot of cerium off the pad by putting an angle on it you can see how much cerium is still in the pad I'll take a quick look again and see our exterior bevel is nice and shiny now it's like our realm you can see I've now replaced my Center plug with our male to male adapter again to show you our polishing dome that we make if you really wanted to polish those interior bevels to get it completely clear you can use one of our polishing domes now this is a hard structure it's going to use the same cerium oxide as our small polishing pad what we generally recommend doing is probably making a paste out of our cerium a very little water flow just need a little bit to keep the dome moist so use our polishing dome you'll generally want to make a paste consistency out of the cerium so this is relatively thick that's just mixing it with less water so it's more of a paste and less of a clear surface now you can apologize you can try and put the paste on the inside of the glass and the same technique move it around our polishing dome to try and get all the surfaces it doesn't take much cerium because a lot of it will stay in there so you just get taking it off every once in a while moving the paste around on the glass and putting it back on our polishing dough you can see there's still a lot of cerium paste in there he's taking it off every so often moving the paste around to that interior bevel again and back onto the dome over and over again you can see it doesn't really take a whole lot of the cerium you're mainly recycling what you've already put on there it tends to just want to go down into the glass as you work so you're going to move your paste back up into where your interior bevel is once you've worked that it won't take long for the polishing dome to give you a really nice polish on your interior bevel you can see how it's shining there a rim is nice and shiny and our exterior bevel is nice and shiny so this makes it very nice drinking glass once you take the labels off it'll be nice and clear you

Channel: hisglassworksinc

Views: 678,299

Rating: 4.5527201 out of 5

Keywords: wine bottle cutting, wine bottle drinking glass, grinding wine bottles, Bottle (Product Category)

Id: EiKJ9eSqEnY

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2015