# cutting glass bottles and sanding the cuts?



## jeffsw6 (Oct 28, 2012)

My girlfriend's cousin is getting married in about 5 weeks and she is trying to come up with some budget center-pieces for the reception. Her idea involves cutting some wine bottles. I looked into this and it seems like making clean cuts through glass bottles is not very easy.

Because she will need quite a few of these, I'm guessing 20, I think it'll be helpful to have a tool to sand/polish the cuts so they are smooth. Otherwise it will take a long time with emery cloth, or guests will be cutting their hands on sharp glass!

Do I want something like diamond sanding drums for my Dremel tool? I have seen them cheap on amazon.com. I also own a hand-held grinder and a drill press if either of these would be a better tool to use than the Dremel.

EDIT: also is a regular shop vac filter the best way to clean up the small glass debris this is likely to produce? If not, what else?


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## epson (Jul 28, 2010)

look at this:http://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=how+to+cut+glass+bottles


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## noquacks (Jun 5, 2010)

jeffsw6 said:


> My girlfriend's cousin is getting married in about 5 weeks and she is trying to come up with some budget center-pieces for the reception. Her idea involves cutting some wine bottles. I looked into this and it seems like making clean cuts through glass bottles is not very easy.
> 
> Because she will need quite a few of these, I'm guessing 20, I think it'll be helpful to have a tool to sand/polish the cuts so they are smooth. Otherwise it will take a long time with emery cloth, or guests will be cutting their hands on sharp glass!
> 
> ...


Do the job outside, if not too cold. No clean up . Better wear a mask.


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## jeffsw6 (Oct 28, 2012)

I thought I'd update on this.

I bought a $20 tool off amazon.com that is supposed to be great for scoring bottles so you can then cut them using cold/hot water. It does work, but most of the bottles do not cut cleanly enough that they are worth sanding down. So it takes a lot of bottles to get a smaller number of useful ones.

My gf's uncle / father of the bride has been using a tile saw. His method is better for "rough cutting" the bottles, but they have a lot of sharp edges and could easily cut someone.

We are sanding the rough cut ones using a diamond sanding drum. It cost about $6 for six of them. They are tiny and go on a 1/4" drum in my dremel tool. This is good for smoothing the sharp edges.

I also tried the tiny drum in my drill press. This allows me to setup a fence block on the table and grind the bottom of the bottle so it will stand upright, even if it starts out pretty crooked. It is a lot of wear on the diamond sanding drum though.

WD40 on a shop towel cleans the glass debris off the bottles nicely.

The bride has asked for 100 of these. I think we will be able to get that done in the remaining 3 weeks before her wedding. Maybe not without buying more of those diamond drums, though!


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## jeffsw6 (Oct 28, 2012)

Oh, also, the bride got some prices on people who sell chopped bottles for this. One place wanted $20 a piece, or $2000! The cheapest was $5ea but you have to give them 3 bottles for every 1 you want, so basically she would need to hand over 300 bottles and $500.

I can understand why they charge a bit for these decorations. They are time-consuming to produce.


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