ACK! this frustrates me because it is such a difficult way to go about things and it will look more professional. Let me break it down to be a little bit easier for everyone with just a tiny bit more upstart cost.

Downsides to this method: Total cost of materials ~$44

Upsides: Much cleaner cut which means less sanding Much better chance of saving the top of the bottle Much safer than using matches or flames Much quicker

Here we go:

1. First buy your scoring device: http://tinyurl.com/bo249me This is your cost essentially. With the glass "cutting" tool you will first score the bottle with essentially a scratch. Try to be as smooth as possible while cutting it. Use even pressure when using the device.

2. Get some hot water. I typically like to get the water up to 180° F

3. Run cool (not cold) tap water under a faucet.

4. Take your scored bottle and first cool it with the tap water along the score.

5. Take the bottle completely out of the running stream and pour a small steady stream of your heated water over the score.

6. Alternate between step 4 and 5.

What this does and why it is better: You are using smaller extremes of heat and cold thus the glass is less likely to crack along the impurities which glass contains. It may take a bit longer than the fire method (It takes me about 5 minutes to split a bottle) but you will notice that the top half of the bottle is in tact generally. You will have a large amount of saved time overall because sanding is nearly not required. I am able to create glasses to drink from in about 30 minutes of smoothing the top with a very fine glass sanding block. (Caution: glass shards suck, use gloves/mask/eye protection, seriously)

This is a hobby that I got into about a year ago. I found that using bottles that have never been refrigerated work the best, think of extremes of temperature again and the imperfections. When I started my success rate of keeping a quality bottle was about 1 in 4, now I am at about 1 in 2. I toss bottles that are not perfectly or near perfectly separated.

If anyone has any additional questions about this I'm more than happy to share my experience hit me up on a message here or PM me.

Edit: Formatting