Turning bottles into sheet glass

One way that we reuse bottles at Remark Glass is turning them into sheet glass. With such a wide range of bottle glass colors available to us it makes a lot of sense to use it for this purpose! Sheet glass is typically used in projects that showcase the beautiful color of the glass when light passes though it. And with the large variety of bottle thickness that we have readily available, we can even show the subtle differences thickness can provide to color from bottles of the same color but different thickness.

The process used to turn a bottle into sheet glass is relatively simple. It involves the use of two tools, the diamond saw and a kiln. First I prep the bottle by soaking it in a solution of alconox and water. Alconox is a chemistry cleaner that doesn't leave any residue on the glass. We soak the bottles so the labels and adhesives will easily come off, we need the bottles to be spotless for the sheet glass to come out good looking. After soaking the bottles I scrape off the labels and adhesive and then give them a good scrub. Now I take the bottles to the diamond saw. I make two horizontal cuts through the bottle to take of the neck and the bottom so we are left with a straight walled cylinder that is open on the top and bottom. Next I make a straight vertical cut through the cylinder so it is separated into two pieces. When looked at from the top they look like the letter C. These pieces are then cleaned again with alconox. Now I put on a pair of gloves to make sure I don't get any oils or residue from my skin on the glass and very carefully clean them again with denatured alcohol until they are absolutely spotless. The final step to turning these into sheet glass is to carefully load them into the kiln so they can slump flat. They are placed convex side down so gravity will bring the two sides of the glass down flat without introducing any folds or crinkles. The kiln is then brought up to slumping temperature and the glass is slowly cooled to anneal.