I have a very unusual shaped wine bottle, that I would like to make into a table lamp. How do I drill a hile in the base of the bottle? (Without breaking it). could a glass shop do this for me?
Do you have a dremmel tool? If so get the diamond point (rounded oblong). Use some petroleum jelly on it and it won’t crack. It’s noteasy but it can be done. I remember when I was in college making…***things ** *… with cool glass bottles.
A rock and gem shop should have a diamond cutter as well. Unless you have a glass shop around.
I’d like to think you could do it yourself with a drill press if you went nice and slow and used water or something to lubricate/cool the bottle.
What I’ve read about drilling glass beads always says to drill with the glass submerged in water.
That being said, my mom used to make lamps out of bottles using a kit like this.
The wire comes out of the socket, obviously, but it’s a whole lot simpler than drilling glass, and if you then ever wanted to use the bottle for something else (like an oil lamp), the bottle is still intact.
The drill press helps a lot, you need a much lighter touch than drilling, say, wood. Too much pressure will guaranty a broken very unusual shaped wine bottle! A variable speed drill works great too.
For a regular drill/drill press you want a “glass and tile” bit, it looks like this.
Go slow, keep it wet, light pressure (don’t force the bit!!!), the right bit, and glass is easy to drill.
CMC +fnord!
Agree, I made a lamp out of a Perrier bottle and used a bit just like this. I didn’t wet it, though. I suppose wetting keeps the work cool; overheating could cause the glass to crack, but mine didn’t.
Wouldn’t it be easier to melt the hole out with a steel rod and a torch?
For what that technique would most likely accomplish in the hands of a novice, a rock would be even easier.
To be fair, this is a technique I’ve read about for putting holes in lightbulbs. We just used an acetylene torch though.
It’s much easier to do with very thin glass, like light bulbs. Additionally, the type of glass used for bulbs is much more resistant to thermal stresses, for obvious reasons. Bottles, not so much.
Been there, done that, failed miserably. Found out later most glass bottles and jars are tempered for strength. By the time you get the glass hot enough to melt it shatters. One can try heating the whole bottle but then you run the risk of having it melt. Lightbulbs are not made from tempered glass.
The tile drill bit sets linked to above are suitable for drilling small holes in glass bottles or other glass objects. A drill press or hand held drill motor works well. Be sure to keep the drilling area covered with water or fed with a small stream of mater to contain the bits of glass removed by driling.
My grandson and I have drilled numerous glass blocks on both the face and edge surfaces with a Plumber’s 1" core drill used to drill tile for bath fixture penetrations. Best done under water as above and in a bucket to contain the ground up and fractured bits of glass.
WEAR SAFETY GLASSES AND OR A FACE SHIELD. A bit of glass in the eye is painful and very difficult to see to remove. See a proffessional eye care specialist if you should unhappily find yourself in this predicament.
Good advice. And if you do it in air, rather than under water, a dust mask is also advisable.
On the farm, we used to make a dam around the proposed hole site with putty, fill it with kerosene and drill away …
w.
That’s not a bad idea, but I’d use something just a little less flammable, like a light mineral oil.
I’ve used ordinary hole saws, as well as both copper and iron pipe to core drill glass for telexcope projects. They are used with 80 grit silicone carbide free abrasive in a water slurry contained by a putty dam as mentioned upthread. I’ve gone through 3/4" of crown in 15 minutes or so. I use very low cutting speed…50sfpm or thereabouts.
You couldn’t do it with a bottle, but one trick on sheet glass is to drill halfway, and then finish from the other side. This way you don’t get chipping when the cutter breaks through the end of the hole…though you need excellent fixturing to avoid having a “step” in the middle of the hole.
Kerosene was what we used when I worked at a glass company long ago. Still works today. but I prefer the waterjet.
Diamonds are the fastest cutters, but in the days prior to their availability a copper tube was used with a notched end running in a daub of Clover compound (most usually silicon carbide in a grease mix ).
Probably stating the obvious, but don’t start with your “unusual shaped wine bottle”. Start out with some cheap wine or beer bottles to get the feel of it.
Why kerosene?