Topic: Scratched and Waterstained Glass

[twenty21]

Hello Rob

Thanks so much for your suggestions! However, excuse my ignorance but what do you mean by copper bits and where would you source them? Does aluminium oxide come in powder form? Once again, is it easy to source?

Cheers Carlo

[gfirob]

I posted some links above about cleaning bottles in the US.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar hobbies in Australia.  For the bits of copper, people take copper wire and clip it into 1/8th or 1/16 lengths or they make a jig to do it with an electric drill.  Aluminum oxide does come in powdered form.  People who tumble gems to polish them use this kind of technology as well, but the copper is useful for glass because it is too soft to scratch the glass but heavy enough to push the oxide around.  I'd check out bottle collectors (people who dig up bottles as a  hobby) in Australia and I'll bet it is the same as it is in the US.

[Ohio]

There are two substitutes you can use for the copper. Try BBs as in BB gun or small hardened plastic industrial pellets as both as less expensive by a long shot compared with copper. Ken

[gfirob]

People use glass beads too, (which are much cheaper but much lighter), but bb's are plated steel and not ideal for cleaning glass.  I'm only going from what the bottle collectors do, but there are a whole lot of these guys in the states and cut copper wire seems to be the final material of choice.  I went to the Baltimore Bottle show recently and I think they had over a thousand booths selling bottles and bottle related stuff.  And there were tumbling machines there and copper cut to size and aluminum oxide.  Seems to be the preferred method.  And some of these bottles are worth quite a lot of money, so people are careful about damaging them.

[Ohio]

I guess I should have clarified that I meant plastic BBs which have been around for awhile now. Airsoft & Crossman both make them & you can get a jug rather inexpensively. Ken