Topic: Recycling glass with a difference

[aa]

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of recycling glass, not in the conventional way, but re-using an existing vessel?

I know that Strathearn used to make ashtrays out of Teacher's whisky bottles but I don't think that quite counts as really recycling. Once they realised the market they had new bottles shipped in with special transfers.

I have been meaning to do some experiments for ages and finally today I put some wine and champagne bottles into a kiln, brought them up to about 500 degrees and picked them up on a punty, made from a small piece of glass cut off the neck of the bottle, that was also heated up in the kiln. (Images tomorrow if they turn out ok)

Once the bottles were on the punty I then reheated in the glory hole as if they had been blown in the studio. Tried a couple of ideas on them....put silver leaf on the rim of one, flaring it out into a carafe. Sheared the rim of the other, saved the shearing which my assistant remelted, added silver leaf to it and melted this in and then brought it to me as a trail and a bit. Quite interesting results, but only from a  hot perspective.. you get used to seeing things before they've been annealed and you have to compensate for the heat.

I know that quite a few people have tried this before, with Coca Cola bottles for example, but only on a very small scale. Does anybody know of anyone who is doing this on a regular basis?  I'm particularly interested to know about colour compatability etc if I should want to move away from champagne green!

As Ivo knows, I have been promising Patricia an interesting Hyacinth vase for ages....how about a hyacinth vase made from a Champagne bottle?  Perhaps it could work.... after all the carafe I made today was not far off anyway!

[Lustrousstone]

There seems to be a big market in glasses made from sawn off bottles with added feet or just sawn off as tumblers

[aa]

Yes, I've seen these and I know a few people who make them. While I applaud their green stance, I can't help feeling that they are not really very pleasing aesthetically. They look a bit like....well.....sawn off bottles!!    :sleep:

[a40ty]

Hi Adam,
This is Leif Hauge's website:
http://www.glasweb.se/hauge/eng/index.html

I hope you find it interesting. His things are either instantly recognisable or totally changed.

Nice jewellery, by the way 

[Ivo]

Oh I remember the cutters - they were very popular in the seventies. What you had was a glass cutter in an adjustable frame which would cut arount the outside of the bottle; then there was a litle hammer on a stick to bang the cut line from the inside of the bottle. And in about half the cases you were left with a split bottle which you then had to smooth on waterproof sand paper which took forever. The result was a horrid looking tumbler with the wrong feel - they still turn up on markets.

I have also seen hot reuse of bottles, someone in Empoli (and/or Spain) has been experimenting with fusing and twisting esp. light amber bottles. But the result would still be recognisable as something that came out of the botle bank.

Good luck with the champagne bottles, seems like heavy going to me.

[aa]

Thanks very much, Ivo. Fascinating. But 40,000 bottles in stock sounds a nightmare -even bigger than your collection!

[Frank]

Re-use of containers is rife in Africa and Asia but without manipulation. Ngwenya glass is credited with having introduced recycled glass as the only source of a glassworks raw materials. They started conventional glass making with foreign (& Kosta Boda) aid but failed after a few years - but an intrepid glass animal collector got things restarted using only old bottles. Everything they make is hand made. http://www.ngwenyaglass.co.sz/

The European examples I am familiar with all date to circa 1880-1920 when the shortage and cost of generators made it difficult for people to get electricity unless they made their own batteries, by 1900 this was in the realms of older children's self learning. Although glass companies were churning out battery jars it was very easy to make them too and the prescribed method was to fill a bottle or carboy with oil to the level required - plunge a red hot poker into the oil and the bottle neatly separates. I have seen it done and just need an open fire to try it myself.

[Ivo]

Several plants in Spain use cullet exclusively & have been doing so for at least 20 years. Now re-using bottles is quite another game....

[alexander]

Hadeland did a lot of bottle conversions during and right after WW2, and they do look like sawn of bottles
We have a small toothpick holder that used to be a medicine flask of some sort.

[lddlsa]

Adam

At the last Cambridge Glass Fair, I was interested in the work of Barbara Coulam who recycles glass, her work can be seen at www.clerestory.co.uk
You also stood at that fair, is that the right expression? well you weren't sitting down much anyway so I guess you saw her work.

I fuse mainly float glass with what are supposed to be float compatible frits.  Some people don't use these materials because the COE of float can vary more than other fusing glasses and is only really compatible with itself.
I was intrigued by Barbara's work because she had recycled different colour glasses on the same piece.  I asked her about compatibilty problems and how she dealt with it, did she check each piece for hidden stresses?  I believe her response was that in the early days she would put items in the dishwasher to test for such stresses but now she relies on her experience gained through her glass qualification and years of working with the materials.

Although you would use a different process to form the glass, does Barbara's work indicate that different recycled glass can be used together successfully?