HOW TO MAKE ANY HOLE IN A BOTTLE USING A SOLDERING IRON

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The Internet is full of instructions on how to evenly cut the neck of a glass bottle and thus make an original glass or vase. But today I will tell you my way how to cut a small window in a glass bottle or cut it lengthwise.

Will need

To do this, we need a regular soldering iron with a thin tip, a marker for drawing the contour of the hole, a glass cutter or a sharp metal object to mark the initial point of the cut.

Cut a window in a glass bottle

At the first stage on the glass with the help of a marker we draw a contour of the future hole.

Then, in one of the places along the contour (it is desirable that this be a straight section), a notch is made using a glass cutter or a sharp metal object to facilitate the formation of a crack.

Next, the place where the scratch was put is heated with a soldering iron.

Glass warms up gradually, in small sections of a few millimeters.

After the formation of a crack, the soldering iron tip moves further along the marker line. If the crack has stopped, you must go back and warm the glass in the opposite direction.
I want to say right away that the work is painstaking and you need to be patient.
When reaching the corner of the cutting line, you need to carefully warm up the corner so that the crack rotates at the desired angle. This is the most difficult part, since the internal forces acting in the glass prevent the crack from turning. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a smooth turn or an angle of 90 degrees. From my own experience I can say that quite often (about 25% of cases) a crack does not turn exactly where it is needed or even goes to one side. Therefore, at first I warm the corners with a sting pointwise, and then slowly spend them to pass the crack.

Because of the problems with corners, this method is not entirely good for cutting small holes in glass.

Another important step is the completion of the crack. It is better to connect cracks in a straight section, but not in a corner. Now I will explain why. The fact is that at a distance of about 3 mm from each other, cracks very often stop moving and simply do not connect. Therefore, I just warm up this area, and then gently tap with a solid object on the cut area from the inside of the bottle through the neck.

The uncut section of the glass breaks off due to which notches remain, which then have to be carefully grounded with a fine emery cloth.

Also using this method, I cut the bottle in half lengthwise. The only caveat - I could not drag the crack to the bottom of the bottle (probably due to too thick glass), so I cut the glass around the bottom.

I also experimented and cut out a large window on the entire side of the bottle - everything turned out fine. But when trying to cut a small rectangular window, strong cracks went in two corners, so this experiment can be considered unsuccessful.
This simple method allows you to cut the glass bottle along.