If you were impressed with the swanky recycled wine bottle cups we shared with you, but had trouble cutting the bottles cleanly, you'll definitely want to check out this guide to getting perfect cuts.


Recycle Wine Bottles into Swanky Cups Dropping off your bottles to be recycled is great and all, but with this DIY solution you'll be… Read more

Dan Roja, from the site GreenPowerScience was really disappointed in the methods for cutting wine bottles. He tried all sorts of techniques including the burning-twine method, cutting with a grinder, using a blow torch on a scored line, etc. All the methods ended up generating fracture lines that were too jagged and required too much cleanup work to make fit for use. He did his research and tried a new technique, check it out in the video below. The first half of the video is informative, showing you what bad results look like and what kind of cut you're aiming for, but if you want to jump right to the tutorial part of the video you'll want to hop to around 3:40 into the clip.

For those of you behind YouTube-hating firewalls, the secret sauce in Dan's technique is to make a single score line in the glass using an inexpensive tool for cutting wine bottles—the same simple device featured in the previous wine bottle cup tutorial—and then pour boiling water over the score line. The lower temperature of the boiling water, compared to the much higher temperature of the flame used in other techniques, yields a much cleaner fracture line with next to no chipping or cracking.


Have a clever technique for recycling something old into something new? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Cut a Wine Bottle with a Perfect Edge [GreenPowerScience via Make]