Cutting a Wine Bottle

Who doesn't love a good glass (or bottle for that matter) of wine? I know my family does. However what to do with the wine bottles once you have drained them of their delicious content? This was the conundrum we faced. Then low and behold on Pinterest we found the answer... cut the tops off and make glasses out of them! Yeah Baby!!! You have to love multiple uses for things, especially in this day and age. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!!

My mom had graciously donated her wine bottle collection for this little experiment and so the trial by fire began. We acquired our materials:
Wine bottles
Acetone
Twine
Lighter
Bucket
Ice
Water
Sanding Block
Heat proof gloves (we discovered this important step mid-experiment)

So we began cutting out lengths of twine long enough to wrap around the bottle several times. Soak the string in the acetone and then very quickly wrap around the bottle where you want your cut to be and tie it off. Make sure you cut your loose ends away because they will effect how your bottle breaks.

So we had completed the above steps, had our lighter ready and our bucket of really cold water to hand. Light the string, spin the bottle for about 30 secs and QUICK dunk in the water and........ nothing :(. First attempt was a failure! Nothing happened! Not to be deterred we tried again... and nothing. Not we added LOTS of ice to the water. Take #3... and still nothing. Still not to be outdone by our experiment we pressed on: moved inside the garage, and called in the help of a professional (my husband). We repeated the above process with these changes: after we wrapped the twine we poured acetone over the string again (to much was evaporating) and we brought out the big gloves to be able to hold the bottle longer. So cut, soak, wrap, pour, light, turn, wait, dunk... and SUCCESS!!!!!! Our bottle broke exactly as it should!!!

The jubilation in the room was palpable as we heard the necessary pop of the bottle coming apart and our hysterical laughter and dancing about the garage as we retrieved our bottle from the bucket and saw that we had done it correctly!! We grabbed our new glass and began sanding the cut edge to make sure that we wouldn't do undo injury to ourselves and anyone else by drinking from our new creation.

We repeated this process several times with a few successes and two resounding failures where the bottle separated and cracked in half length wise. Not our finest Pinterest moment. Finally we basically gave this one up as a lost cause. I am sure with practice we could have it down to a science.... but we aren't patient like that. So chalk this one up to a lesson learned and we are moving on. :)