Prep

As I continued to sort the different colors of bottles and getting the hang of it, I became a master at it and could tell which clear was more "green" then "ice blue". The next few weeks I got in a routine to find out which bottles needed to be "preped" for blowing. Preping bottles to blow intailed an on going production process.
1. Soak bottles in buckets filled with soapy water.
2. When labels start to soften scrape off carefully with a razor - if it's not coming off easy enough we would put them back to soak more.
3. After the label is off we have to get the glue off the bottle so there is no residue and so we take a scratchy sponge with dish soap and put a little elbow grease into get it off.
4. Now we cut each bottle on a wet saw to the certain high depending on what it is being made into.
5. They are now cut to height and need to be scrubbed right after being cut with a scrubby and soap to get rid of the glass debris from cutting.
6. All washed and now almost ready to be loaded in the kiln I clean them with acetone to make sure no more glue or anything is left on it to make the glass look "fuzzy" when heated and manipulated.
7. Loaded in kiln and sent up to be worked on in the hot shop.