Cutting Glass Bottles

Can you cut glass bottles?

You certainly can!

A cheap and easy way to get started is by purchasing a glass bottle cutter kit which is exactly what I did. I got the kit shown in the photo below from Amazon for about £20.

This kit for cutting glass bottles has everything you need to start cutting wine bottles an beer bottles etc… including safety gloves and a sponge for washing your bottles out. The rig is fully adjustable to accept long and short bottles or to put your cut line in different positions along the bottle. The cradle wheels and the cutter blade can also be adjusted inwards to accommodate narrower bottles.

This system is great for the hot-water / cold-water method of splitting the bottle. Simply score the bottle all the way around, add the rubber bands either side of the cut line you have made, pour hot water around the bottle between the bands, dunk in cold water and if you’re lucky the bottle will split neatly around the cut line. In reality, it probably won’t split perfectly so some tidying up will probably be required. But do be prepared for quite a few failures using this method! Even when you’re a dab hand some bottles don’t like to split at all and some like to crack in random places. Practice will reduce the level of casualties.

Cutting Glass Bottles With A Bottle Cutting Kit

Select the bottle you wish to cut. The thicker the glass the harder it can be to get it to cut.
Set the bottle cutting kit to the position so that the cutting blade is line with where you wish to make the cut line.
Put your safety googles and safety gloves on.
Slowly rotate the bottle so that the cutting blade leaves a score mark all around the bottle. There is usually no need to do more than one complete revolution.
Boil some water in a kettle or on the stove.
Fill a container or sink with cold water.
While the kettle is boiling add a rubber band either side of the cut line you have marked on the bottle, slowly rotating so you heat it up all the way around – this focuses the heat along the cut line.
Dunk the bottle into the cold water. It may just pop apart there and then without any effort. Sometimes a very minimal force may need to be applied to provoke the separation. If not successful first time repeat the process. A kettle full of boiling water should be enough to allow for a few attempts.

If all went well the bottle has now split cleanly in to 2 pieces along the cut line with minimal tidying-up to do in terms of levelling off any dips and rises along the line. If so, this bottle is now ready for smoothing off with glasspaper or sandpaper to remove the sharp edges all around the cut line.

It things didn’t go so well and the bottle split in half but it didn’t split entirely along the cut line in quite a major way, then you really have 2 choices:

1) Throw that bottle away and start again with a new bottle. This is the quickest and easiest solution if you have a stockpile of similar bottles you can work with.

2) If the imperfection is not on the section of the bottle you wished to keep, you might be able to rescue the situation if you have a small grinder, such as a Dremmel, to slowly grind away along the remainder of the cut line. I will be posting a video of this process soon.