[jeffsw6]

My girlfriend's cousin is getting married in about 5 weeks and she is trying to come up with some budget center-pieces for the reception. Her idea involves cutting some wine bottles. I looked into this and it seems like making clean cuts through glass bottles is not very easy.

Because she will need quite a few of these, I'm guessing 20, I think it'll be helpful to have a tool to sand/polish the cuts so they are smooth. Otherwise it will take a long time with emery cloth, or guests will be cutting their hands on sharp glass!

Do I want something like diamond sanding drums for my Dremel tool? I have seen them cheap on amazon.com. I also own a hand-held grinder and a drill press if either of these would be a better tool to use than the Dremel.

EDIT: also is a regular shop vac filter the best way to clean up the small glass debris this is likely to produce? If not, what else?

 

[epson]

look at this:http://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=how+to+cut+glass+bottles

 

[noquacks]

My girlfriend's cousin is getting married in about 5 weeks and she is trying to come up with some budget center-pieces for the reception. Her idea involves cutting some wine bottles. I looked into this and it seems like making clean cuts through glass bottles is not very easy.

Because she will need quite a few of these, I'm guessing 20, I think it'll be helpful to have a tool to sand/polish the cuts so they are smooth. Otherwise it will take a long time with emery cloth, or guests will be cutting their hands on sharp glass!

Do I want something like diamond sanding drums for my Dremel tool? I have seen them cheap on amazon.com. I also own a hand-held grinder and a drill press if either of these would be a better tool to use than the Dremel.

EDIT: also is a regular shop vac filter the best way to clean up the small glass debris this is likely to produce? If not, what else?

Do the job outside, if not too cold. No clean up . Better wear a mask.

 

[jeffsw6]

I thought I'd update on this.

I bought a $20 tool off amazon.com that is supposed to be great for scoring bottles so you can then cut them using cold/hot water. It does work, but most of the bottles do not cut cleanly enough that they are worth sanding down. So it takes a lot of bottles to get a smaller number of useful ones.

My gf's uncle / father of the bride has been using a tile saw. His method is better for "rough cutting" the bottles, but they have a lot of sharp edges and could easily cut someone.

We are sanding the rough cut ones using a diamond sanding drum. It cost about $6 for six of them. They are tiny and go on a 1/4" drum in my dremel tool. This is good for smoothing the sharp edges.

I also tried the tiny drum in my drill press. This allows me to setup a fence block on the table and grind the bottom of the bottle so it will stand upright, even if it starts out pretty crooked. It is a lot of wear on the diamond sanding drum though.

WD40 on a shop towel cleans the glass debris off the bottles nicely.

The bride has asked for 100 of these. I think we will be able to get that done in the remaining 3 weeks before her wedding. Maybe not without buying more of those diamond drums, though!

 

[jeffsw6]

Oh, also, the bride got some prices on people who sell chopped bottles for this. One place wanted $20 a piece, or $2000! The cheapest was $5ea but you have to give them 3 bottles for every 1 you want, so basically she would need to hand over 300 bottles and $500.

I can understand why they charge a bit for these decorations. They are time-consuming to produce.