How to Cut a Bottle Using String and Fire can help you make self-watering planters, unusual candles, chandeliers, or even wind chimes if you’ve ever received a bottle of wine and wanted to turn it into something useful afterward because you loved the design.
Here we’ll be repurposing SKYY vodka bottles; I love these bottles because they’re blue and help to protect the roots of the plants from being burned by the hot Southern sun. This project is so simple and takes literally less than 10 minutes from start to finish.
How to Cut a Bottle Using String and Fire
You’ll Need: Acetone (Or Cheap Dollar Store Fingernail Polish Remover) Cotton String A Couple of Bottles Bucket of Cold Water
To begin, tightly wrap the dry string around the bottle and knot it. You can either use multiple wraps to make the string thicker, as I have here, or you can use just one string that was snagged from a Cotton Mop. You’ll want to use cotton because it wicks moisture.
Once the String is tied in a knot, snip off the excess ends and slide it off the bottle. Place the string in just enough acetone (fingernail polish remover) to completely saturate it and slide it back onto the bottle.
Turn the bottle over and over again to ensure that the string burns evenly after lighting the string on fire.
As soon as the flame on the string starts to go out, immediately submerge the bottle in ICE COLD water. The glass will then break, make a popping noise, and separate as shown below:
To make the edges of the cut glass smooth and stop them from being jagged and sharp, you’ll need to lightly sand them.
Learn how to make your own self-watering planter by clicking here.
This incredibly simple method of cutting a wine bottle ensures that you do not directly handle broken glass and saves time and energy.
In the world of DIY, where projects that reuse the outdated and the abandoned are king, wine bottles are some of the most popular materials of choice. Well, today’s tutorial puts an end to that DIY puzzle and does so in blazing, hot style! Most of them will tell you what to do with a wine bottle that has been neatly cut and its bottom removed, but many will not tell you how to get that done!
Once everything is ready, begin by wrapping the cotton string around the bottle’s point where you want to cut it. Remove it and soak it in some acetone or acetone-containing nail polish remover. Put the string back on, light it, and rotate the bottle to ensure that the flame burns the string uniformly (some do not use acetone, so be sure you do this correctly.)
You’ll notice that the piece of the bottle you wanted sawed off will “magically” fall out on its own if you submerge the hot bottle end in a sink of cold water. Simply use sandpaper to smooth the edges and you are good to go. It really is all about hot air and sudden cooling.