How to Cut a Bottle With String and Nail Polish Remover!

by Nanovirus in Living > Decorating

1056377 Views, 209 Favorites, 0 Comments

How to Cut a Bottle With String and Nail Polish Remover!

Cut a glass bottle in two cover.jpg
A wonderful use for a glass bottle is a container. However a container can only contain that which will fit in the hole. This solution to how to cut a reasonable good cut, quickly and effectively in a glass wine bottle will be instructed below.

I do hope you enjoy and stay safe! as this can be quite dangerous!

Gather Materials

041220112324.jpg
To do this all you will need is:
Some string
1 Glass bottle (the thinner the glass bottles wall the better)
Acetone (Most commonly found in nail polish remover
Scissors
Some form of abrasive paper (I used emery board)
Sink filled with cold water (the colder the better. I used ice which helped)
Igniting source

Prepare the Bottle

041220112328.jpg
041220112329.jpg
041220112330.jpg
041220112325.jpg
041220112326.jpg
041220112332.jpg
Fill a large sink with cold water. The colder the better! My end try ended up working with blocks of ice) Do make sure that the sink is not only wide enough to hold the bottle but deep enough to thoroughly submerge it.

Gather your string and wrap a portion of it around the circumference of the bottle. Tie the string together and cut off the excess.

Take the string off the bottle and submerge it into a volume of nail polish remover.

Put the string back around the the bottle and prepare to ignite! So keep the bottle of nail polish away and be prepared  for accidental fires.

The Big Dunk!

051220112340.jpg
051220112341.jpg
051220112342.jpg
051220112343.jpg
*Unfortunately my camera decided to have a nap during the video process of this step so I will explain what happened including mistakes and improvements.*

What is done now is to ignite the string soaked in acetone and rotate the bottle as the flames lick around the bottle. This increases the temperature around that portion of the glass, inducing stress in the material. Glass is one of the materials which doesn't like being heated and chilled quickly! This property is used to our advantage in this process.

Once the bottle has been adequately heated it is quickly, sharply and abruptly dunked into the volume of cold water. This massive change in temperature at the strings location on the glass causes a thermal shock, rippling a crack around the glass and splitting it in two!

I found out however that one run with the string wasn't enough to heat the glass so once the flame extinguished itself from lack of fuel, I replenished the fuel by dripping nail polish remover over the string then re-igniting. In order to get enough heat I had to do this three times, so expect to replenish the fuel. 

On the contrary, the idea of the experiment was to create a massive difference in temperature so if you can't get the bottle hot enough, make the water colder! I found out that this was almost necessary for my experiment so a dozen or so ice cubes helped to bring the temperature of the water down.

Once the glass had split in two, I ran several emery board strips against the inside and outside rim of both portions, removing the hazardously sharp edge of the bottle. Now I am left with two containers of which aren't effected by most chemicals, transparent, strong and above all, fascinating!

Final Thoughts

051220112345.jpg
Filling it with soil and planting a rose would be a beautiful gift for a loved one, using them as containers to hold pain brushes while they sit in white spirit, toothbrush/pens/pencil holders at work, elaborately welding the top back on in the reverse direction to make an intricate piece of art! The possibilities are only limited by the imagination!

Stay safe and enjoy! :D