On Sun, 27 May 2007 22:59:26 GMT, Lobby Dosser
wrote:

Prometheus wrote:

That's a possibility- and while I had initially thought to myself that
the neck makes that a unusable suggestion, I just recalled seeing a
guy cutting bottle glass to make outdoor lamps. The process was
pretty simple- you heat up a bar of metal to an orange heat (and I
would assume that an oxy acetaline torch would work fine in lieu of a
forge,) bend it over, and then press the bottle against the point of
the bend while rotating it. It melts the glass a little bit, and gets
it hot in a thin line all the way around- and then to break it, you
just plunge it into water, and the shock shears the glass cleanly.



You can do this with heated nichrome wire (foam cutter) or even tie
string around the bottle and set it on fire. I recall doing the string
thing back in the 60s and it worked quite well.

Good to know- and less work than getting the forge started and heating
a piece of metal.

On the subject of nichrome wire- I bought my wife a razortip
woodburner a while back (she's into pyrography) and we were looking
for a cheap way to dig up some wire for tips- Razortip wanted a mint
for them.

While it wasn't all that cheap, I messed up our (clothes) dryer a
while back and wrecked the heating element. Since I was the dumb SOB
that broke it in the first place, I paid a repairman to come and fix
it up. After he left, I saw that he had left the old element sitting
on my table saw. I untwisted the element, and cut it into 12" pieces-
there's a lot of nichrome wire in one of those things.

Sure enough, it works great on the razortip, and I bet it'd be perfect
for cutting glass with the method described above, and might even make
a good foam cutter, if a guy needed one.

Just a heads-up, in case any of you have an electric dryer go out on
you.