help working bottles

[Fire on the mountain]

i wanted to start working beer and liquor bottles in the flame but most of my attempts have ended in an explosion of glass. What has worked for all of you? what have you tried to make and how?

I was thinking about melting bottles down and pulling canes out to make some kind of jewelry and flaring open bottle tops to make vases. How do you recommend getting the labels off? any other suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated

[rumplephorskin]

soak the labels off. better yet ; use bottles like the corona and red stripe ones; theyve got ceramic decals on them that will stay visible after youve reworked the glass. ive had some success bringing the bottles up to like 1,000 in the kiln and then using a piece of preheated steel rod as a punty. i took another bottle from the same 6 pack and broke it up and used that to attach the metal punty.
have fun and post a pic if you do anything cool, i always find myself thinking about that when i run low on tubing lol

[rustyglass]

Ive seen it done where the guy just held it in his hand. Used a super propane rich flame, like if you were flame annealing something. The kind that leaves soot all over the bottle. Then he flashed it up and down for like 5 minutes, then worked it in the flame. Got it hot and pulled the neck out with some tweezers and called it a swan.....way cool.

[HippyJayM]

Ask Wonka

[Stagger Lee]

I remember at the fair as a kid and seeing a guy clamp the neck in the top of the kiln then turn it on and let gravity strech the bottle. I had one for the longest time and it never broke. He was mostly doing the old one liter coke bottles.

Didn't that guy from Iseral (Ozzra maybe) make some hearts or frogs out of broken bottles?

[SteppingRazor]

I did it the way rusyglass described, but i put it in claw grabbers. No preheat no cracking, just have to go really slow.

[Greymatter Glass]

Bottle Glass is also not really suitable for "blowing", it's forumlated to be processed in automated blow molds and flash annealed in a leher oven (a long kiln, hottest at the entrance, cooling towards the other end, open on both ends, with a conveyor belt running through it)

You can deff use it to play with, but don't expect anything like you'd get from gaffers or seattle batch.

Of course, a fumed corona bottle with a hole drilled in it sells for like $8 as an inscence burner....

-Doug

[gypsea]

you can leave the label on.......just heat the neck......