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How to cut a glass bottle

You may have seen vases made from bottles and wondered how they cut the glass. The process is simple, and with a few steps you can have other people wondering about your glass creations! Try one of these four methods for cutting a glass bottle to get a smooth, clean surface.

Score the bottle. You need to create a tension line for the bottle to crack along, and you do this by scoring a clean line at the desired breaking point. Use a glass cutter or a glass drill bit to create a single, even line wrapping around the glass. Don’t overlap score lines, as this will make your cut more jagged than a single line.

Get the water ready. You will need to be working at a sink with cold water running, and also boil a teakettle of hot water. The process works by pouring boiling and cold water back and forth over the bottle until it snaps at the score line.

Pour the hot water. Hold the bottle over the sink, and slowly pour the hot water over the score line. Avoid pouring it in a wide area, as you want only the score line to be placed under tension from the heat.

Move the bottle into the cold water. As you finish pouring hot water over the entire line around the bottle, put it under the cold water running in the sink. The first time you do this, the bottle likely will not break.

Continue adding hot and cold water. Take the bottle from the cold water and add another pour of the boiling water over the stress line. Pour the water around the entire bottle, and then dip it in the cold water again. After the second or third time of doing this, the bottle should snap cleanly off along the score line.

Sand the edges. Use a rough grit of sandpaper to sand the edges of the glass down. When they are no longer jagged at all, you can use a fine grit sandpaper to smooth the edges to a soft finish.