Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Bottle Cutting


I gave some hints to my wife that I wanted a bottle cutter for Christmas... and so there was one under the tree this year! We normally recycle all of glass bottles and jars in the weekly recycling done by our refuse company. I've always thought it would be great if something useful could be done with the empties, besides the obvious winemaking and refilling! So with this bottle cutter I figured I could make some glasses or maybe a vase with the taller bottles. Here's what the bottle cutter looks like:


It's really nothing fancy. Just a set of rollers and a brace which holds the base of the wine bottle a set distance from the cutting wheel (lower right hand corner of unit).

The last time I remember these things being popular was back in the early seventies, when ecology and recycling was big. Yeah, they teach this stuff to kids today, but have you ever seen what a teenager throws away? Uhuh, EVERYTHING (laziness seeks the easiest way to do things. Note: this logic does not apply to cell phone use; in that case, talking is more efficient, therefore the lazy approach, than texting. But for some reason, texting seems to be the lazy way to communicate between teenagers).

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

More Stained Glass Lanterns

I made a few of the Christmas-themed lanterns for presents this year, and I also made my music-major daughter a musically-themed lantern:



The college she attends has purple and gold as the school colors, so that's why the colors are like they are for this project. She also likes stars, so that's why they are there... nothing musical about stars, as far as I know:








A friend suggested I use some sort of white light "diffuser" behind the glass, to even the amount of light flow. So I bought this paper designed for this purpose from a lamp store. Works great!