Did you know that wine bottles can be recycled in these ways?

Drinking wine is an inspiring experience. Many artists have focused their creativity on wine. References to this product and its virtues are constant in the world of art, music and literature throughout history. Authors such as Ortega y Gasset, Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire have written about it. Thousands of musicians from Eric Clapton to Joan Manuel Serrat quote it in their lyrics. And inspired by wine we can find pictorial works by geniuses such as Picasso, Sorolla and Miró.

But sometimes, it is not necessary to aim so high. Sometimes all you need to do is uncork a bottle and let your imagination run wild. What other uses can you find for a bottle of wine? Here, we will see how we can make some simple crafts with glass bottles.

Wine bottles are made of glass, a material that man has been handling for thousands of years. Glass can be obtained by melting silica sand, which is very abundant in nature, making it relatively cheap to manufacture.

The glass from which wine bottles are made is a material that can be worked in many ways. With the right tools, we can even melt it and give it a completely new shape. However, for most of the crafts we propose below, only two techniques will be necessary: cutting and sanding.

HOW TO CUT GLASS BOTTLES

There are several techniques for cutting glass bottles that do not require the use of special tools. The best way to achieve a clean cut is to use a very abrupt change in temperature, so that the glass molecules themselves do the work.

Heat causes materials to expand and dilate, while cold causes them to contract. A sudden change in temperature in a very localised area of the glass will break its structure. We simply need to weaken the structure that forms the glass to indicate where it should break.

The procedure to be followed will be:

1. MARK THE CUTTING LINES

We use a glass cutter to mark the cutting line. The glass cutter can be found in hardware stores or bazaars for approximately 3 euros.

2. WE APPLY HEAT

To apply localised heat to the area where we have marked the cut, it is best to use a candle. We hold the bottle by the ends and turn it over the flame so that the entire perimeter of the bottle is heated evenly.

The more defined the surface we heat, the easier it will be to obtain a clean cut. About two minutes on the heat will be enough.

3. WE APPLY COLD

Once the cut area is marked and hot, the bottle must be cooled very quickly. To do this, we place it in a bucket previously filled with ice water. A snapping sound will be produced and the bottle will have split in two, leaving a perfect cut.

After this, we only need to finish off the edges of the glass in the area of the division to prevent them from cutting. This can be done by sanding.

HOW TO SAND GLASS BOTTLES

To kill the sharp edges of the wine bottle we will use a fine grain sandpaper, at least 120. We will sand the edges little by little, always trying to maintain a perpendicular angle to the edge. In this way, we will obtain a rounded and smooth finish. We should make a special effort in the sanding process whenever we manufacture objects with which we are going to have a lot of contact, for example, when making glasses or cups.

Once we have mastered these two simple techniques for cutting and sanding glass, all that remains is to apply our imagination to discover hundreds of objects into which we can transform our wine bottles. For example:

GLASSES AND CUPS

The simplest application of these techniques is the making of glasses. Simply cut a bottle in half and kill the edges to make a glass tumbler. If we want to obtain an original glass, we only need to glue the neck of the bottle to our glass. To obtain a strong joint, it is best to use epoxy resin-based adhesive.

LAMPS

With a bottle, a bit of wire and a lamp socket we can create original lighting ideas.

PITCHERS

Sometimes the best results are achieved by the simplest applications - who hasn't used a vase bottle?

POTS

Using transparent bottles we can create these very elegant planters, with their containers to collect the excess water.

SLIDE

Do you play guitar and want to emulate slide heroes like Dereck Truck or Robert Johnson? All you need is a bottleneck to start practising.

The options are endless. There are no limits other than those imposed by our own capacity to imagine. And even these limits can be easily surpassed if we allow ourselves to be inspired by the work that artists such as María Gómez Pereda, Carlos Franco and Juan Genovés have created from a bottle of Vivanco.