Glass Cutting: The Tutorial

We left off last time going through my trials and errors in the field of glass cutting.  Here is my official tutorial for what worked best for me.  I know a lot of people have had success with the other methods, but apparently not this girl.

Materials:
Glass bottles - I used clear bottles, but any type (beer, wine, salsa, etc) will do
Generation Green Bottle Cutter (don't forget your 40% coupon!)
Sandpaper (150 grit was the coarsest I would use)
String (for template)
Electric Hot Pot
WD-40

1.  I let the glass bottles soak in hot, soapy water for about 10 minutes to clean off the labels/glue.  I had Newcastle, Mike's Hard Lemonade and Jack Daniel's Cocktail bottles.  Newcastle labels came off super easy.  Mike's required quite a little bit of scrubbing.

2.  Since I was going for a staggered look, the first thing I needed to do before cutting was to make a template to determine the height of the different cuts.  I had previously played with the bottle arrangement and decided that I was going to use 7 glasses per centerpiece.  I took some string and tied seven pieces on the template, arranging and spacing them as desired.

3.  I got out the glass cutter and lined up the scorer part(that green handle towards the bottom) up with the string on my template.  You'll see that green piece goes in the bottle neck and stays pretty snug to help keep your score line steady.

4.  Apply pressure to the top green piece and the lower handle and rotate the bottle 360 degrees to get a complete score line.

See the snow in the background? 7 inches and counting (that's a lot for KS)!

5.  Now that you have a score line, heat up your hot pot until you have boiling water.  You are first going to pour the boiling water over the entire score line, rotating the bottle as necessary.  Have cold water running from the faucet at the same time.  After you have poured boiling water on the score for about 10-15 seconds, do the same under the cold water.  The change in temperature, the thermal shock, will cause the bottle to break at that score line.  You will see it almost immediately once cold water hits it.  If if doesn't break entirely, alternate by pouring more hot water and then cold water on the line.  Here is a quick, un-edited video if you want to see it in action:

6.  And there you have two pieces with a pretty decent cut!  You will want to sand the edges of the pieces you are going to use.  I got the sand paper a little wet (to avoid dust/glass shards) and sanded parallel to the cut and then on the inside and outside edges too.  It helped to give it a more rounded, finished look and eliminated some of the tiny imperfections.   It also will prevent someone from taking a trip to the hospital to get stitches!  

7.  And repeat.  55+ times.    After about every three cuts, I would apply a tiny dab of WD-40 to the scoring wheel.  It was recommended in the instructions and seemed to help maintain the scorer.  The bottle cutter comes with several (like 5-6) wheels, but I used the same one for all the glasses.

Overall, it wasn't a flawless method, but things turned out dramatically better than any of the other methods that I had tried.  I still had many bottles that didn't turn out as perfectly as I would have liked, so each time I would scrap it and have to try again.  If you do have larger imperfections, you might be able to sand them out, but you will definitely be sanding for awhile!  Since I had 50 bottles to sand, I had high standards, hence the giant box of glass that will be going to the recycling:

As for glass cutting, that's all!  Next time, in the continuing saga of DIY Candle Centerpieces, I'll share my candle making experiences...joy!

Has anyone out there tried glass cutting?  Are you thinking about it now?  I am going to be making so many Christmas presents next year this way.  Think about all the cool bottles out there:  vases and candles galore!