Glass bottle lights: Part one, breaking glass

This is part one because this is how to get the bottoms off of glass bottles to even start. I've seen so many awesome mason jar lights that I wanted to try my hand at it. You know from my earlier posts that I made a DIY  modern light fixture from an old kerosone fixture. This is similar but the multiple hanging lights gives some extra steps. Plus, you have to take the bottoms of the glass off or it will overheat with normal use.

After watching Youtube videos I thought it would be easy to take the glass bottoms off of bottles. Well it is, but it took me several failed attempts. First off, Corona bottles did not work for me, they don't break at the right point. I am using some IBC cream soda bottles in the pictures and 3 out of 4 came out great. Brown beer bottles work good too.

Second off, I bought a little pen type glass cutter off Ebay for about five dollars and made a jig by using two pieces of closet rod attached to a chunk of 2x4 to hold the glass bottles and be able to spin the bottle completely around in place. I hold the glass cutter to the bottle about a half inch up from the bottom (right above the dent on the IBC bottles) and spin the bottle around with my other hand to score it. This helps keep the glass from cracking farther up the bottle.

Now, I tied twine around my score line. About two or three times around is perfect. Tie it off and cut the extra. Now either pour on, or dunk the twine in lighter fluid. I have been keeping the twine on the bottle now, but my first times I wore gloves and dunked the twine and then put it back on.

Have a bucket of water handy filled up enough to be able to dunk your bottles half way in. Also have matches or a lighter ready.

Light the twine on fire, keeping the bottom up and slowly rotate the bottle around. When the bottom gets black, dunk it in the water. One time the bottom did pop off before I got it in the water, but usually as soon as the twine hits the water the bottom pops right off beautifully.

Like I said though, I had some failed attempts at first but once I got my first one I have been getting most of them off cleanly since.

This isn't it though. You now have a bottomless bottle but it is sharp. I used my orbital sander with some 150 grit on it and sanded away. It actually worked great which I was a little surprised by. It had a foggy look though so I followed up with some 400 grit wet and that made it look much better.