Bottle Cleaning
Many bottles can be spruced up with a little old
fashioned elbow grease and an assortment of bottle brushes. When
using brushes be sure to wrap electrical tape around any metal
that may come in contact with the glass to avoid scratching.
(See the link below for an excellent assortment of bottle brushes
at a reasonable price.) The best soap agent for bottle cleaning
is inexpensive and readily available -- common baking soda. It
cleans as good as any detergent and offers the important bonus
of no suds, which can make bottle washing a painfully slow process.
Some sediment that won’t respond to soaking and scrubbing
can be resolved by immersion in hydrochloric (also known as muriatic)
acid. This is the same acid used in swimming pools and will not
attack the glass like the caustic acids that will be mentioned
below. It has no effect on “sick” glass but does
often remove stubborn haze that looks like “sickness” but
doesn’t respond to a standard wash. It can also be effective
on rust stains. Safety precautions such as goggles, long, chemical
resistant gloves, and a respirator should be employed when using
this acid. It may not have a chemical effect on glass but it
definitely does on skin, eyes, and the respiratory system. Be
sure to give the bottle a good washing in a baking soda solution
after contact with hydrochloric acid. After immersion in hydrochloric,
followed by a good washing in baking soda, most bottles will
show a noticeable improvement in sheen.
Surprisingly enough, a tool that can be very effective cleaning
exterior bottle surfaces is fine steel wool. Steel wool does
not scratch glass surfaces like the handle of a bottle brush
will. Some commercial bottle cleaners swear by SOS pads for the
final stage of exterior cleaning after tumbling, dipping in hydrochloric
and washing in baking soda. A light abrasive like Comet can also
work well on exterior surfaces. While most glass can withstand
a scrubbing with a green scouring pad, certain pieces will show
fine scratches when subjected to this treatment.
My mother, who infected me with the bottle bug over 40 years
ago, would rob my father’s shotgun shells of lead pellets
to use in her unique bottle cleaning process. Her technique of
swishing around a handful of lead shot with soap and water in
the bottle was effective at removing stubborn and hard-to-reach
deposits. Little did she know that she had stumbled onto the
key formula of the most effective bottle cleaning process available – tumbling.
Tumbling
The most important thing you need to know about tumbling bottles
is that you probably don’t want to be involved in it at
all, especially since you can pay someone else $10 to $15 per
bottle to do it for you (see the link below for a professional
bottle cleaner). It is a surprisingly long, drawn out and extremely
messy process. It should absolutely not be attempted inside the
home but must be done near a source of running water, preferably
with the aid of a sink, a very old one. The key word here is
garage or outbuilding. Otherwise the keyword is likely to be
divorce.
I purchased my own endless source of headaches about four years
ago. Had I known then what I do now I could have probably saved
oodles of money, not to mention my sanity, by contracting the
work out to one of the above-mentioned entrepreneurs. These guys
apparently have a better source of prozac -- or teenage assistants
-- than I do. Even dollar hungry high school students, who ordinarily
will do anything for car money, don’t last at this job
for long. As soon as I get them trained, they spontaneously --
and mysteriously – vanish. Even at ten bucks an hour! Here
is what has the kids in my neighborhood running for their life
when they see me coming:
Bottle tumbling works on the same principle as rock tumbling,
except that the bottle is held stationary while the tumbling
medium is rotated around the interior and exterior of the bottle.
Short lengths of copper wire, in great quantity, are used as
the tumbling medium. These copper pellets are placed inside the
bottle (the exact amount is a highly guarded secret which I’m
still trying to figured out) along with similarly undetermined
amounts of water, and a fine powdered abrasive referred to as “cut.” The
bottle is then inserted into a PVC tube with fingers to hold
the base and then a secret incantation – still unbeknownst
to me -- is invoked once more to determine the correct amount
of yet more pellets, water and cut, to scour the exterior surface
of the bottle. A lid with rubber stopper, which is inserted into
the neck of the bottle, completes this stage of the process.
While the canisters turn endlessly on a series of rollers driven
by an electric motor, the abrasive slurry removes a fine layer
of glass, along with “sick” and light scratches.
This process takes anywhere from a day to a week depending on
the size of cut used and how much glass needs to be removed.
Again, unknown formulas are used to determine these variables.
When it is time to take the bottle out (or maybe not – you
won’t know until you’ve already done it) the inside
of the canister is filled with a foamy, black slime, which stains
anything it comes in contact with except glass. Next, the canister,
the bottle and all the pellets must be thoroughly washed lest
any remaining trace of cut remain to contaminate the next step – the
polishing process. In case you haven’t already made the
connection, a canister full of copper pellets is real heavy,
making the task of handling and washing them one that your muscles
won’t soon forget. After a bottle has been “cut” it
comes out very foggy. This fogginess can hide remaining sick
that won’t be seen until after it has been polished and,
you guessed it, you get to put it through this maddening process
one more time.
The polishing stage is just like the cutting stage with the exception
of a powdered polishing compound added instead of cut. If all
the sick has been removed this step is relatively straightforward,
except when clear or aqua bottles are being polished. These colors
are notorious for displaying some degree of fogginess in one
or all areas of the “finished” bottle. When this
happens you’ve got to scratch your head and think, did
some leftover cut contaminate this run, or did I use too many
or not enough pellets, water or polish? Or did it possibly tumble
too long? Or not long enough? My analyst recommends I get rid
of the bottle machine.
Seriously though, bottle tumbling machines are great for anyone
who needs to clean a lot of bottles (and has plenty of time and
patience), such as a dealer, but most collectors are better off
contracting the work out. Unless you’d just rather do it
yourself and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, in which
case, this machine is for you!
Bottle cleaning machines and supplies :
Wayne Lowry “The
Jar Doctor”
http://www.jardoctor.com/
Bottle
cleaning machines and supplies, bottle brush assortment, bottle
cleaning service:
Russ Butler
http://www.wrinkles.cjb.net/
Caustic Acids
There is controversy among American and UK collectors about
the best method used to aggressively clean bottles. For some
inexplicable
reason, two widely differing methods evolved in the two countries
and to this day there is little, if any, cross acceptance of
them. Across the pond, a well-guarded secret formula (seriously)
of two caustic acids is used to strip a layer of glass away
from a dipped bottle. To get the best results, the mix and
timing
of immersion are critical. This process is most effective on
sick glass and to a lesser degree on scratches. A poor job
of acid dipping is easy to spot as it leaves the surface
pitted.
Even an experienced user can get these results when some areas
of the bottle surface turn out to be more porous than others,
resulting in an uneven attack on the glass. I’ve heard
stories of pioneer users of the acid method developing serious,
even fatal, illnesses as a result of breathing the fumes over
many years without the protection of a respirator.
The controversy rages on. As I see it, the key difference in
the two methods are that acid kills you by damaging the respiratory
system, while tumbling merely drives you insane! Pick your
poison. Maybe dirty bottles aren’t so bad after all?
Previous Page
|
|
