How to make a slide from a bottle neck

[kagliostro]

I know a method which imply the use of twine and fire
How To Cut Glass Bottles With String

but this seems very simple and easy to do
The easiest bottle neck slide ever

K

[kagliostro]

Uranium glass 

  it will be better to stay away

about the kind of bottle, I think that the wine bottles that we (in Italy) call bordolesi

is one of the best candidate



you can see how the neck is straight, it has also a good thickness

K

[PRR]

Uranium Glass is quite safe. Unless you sleep in a truck full, your exposure is less than background radiation. Being glass, almost none of the U can leach into your drink.

It is also called Vaseline Glass. You can find this at any good antique glass shop.

My grandmother had a Uranium plastic bowl. Her brother is one of several people who developed Polyethylene. One of their first samples was dosed with the then-common orange Uranium pigment. She used it proudly to serve salad. After her brother thought about plastic not being as sealed as glass, he suggested using it for decoration instead of food.

Uranium Glass is also used, in thin layer, in vacuum tube pin seals.

[kagliostro]

There are several types of glass

Yes, I can confirm, I spent a nice day in Murano

I was to a pair of factory, a lot of shops and at the Glass Museum

Very instructive 

K

[Willabe]

Thanks for posting this K!

Bonnie Raitt has been making her own slides for decades now. She said she learned it from the old blues guys when she was first starting out. She has a certain brand of wine that she uses the bottle from to make her slides. I don't know which brand it is.


                Brad     

[kagliostro]

That isn't a kind of wine, is a kind of bottle 

In Italy we have lot of different kinds of wine on those kind of bottles



K

[Zipslack]

BTW, best way to check if Vaseline Glass is actually the real deal is a black light - that is what makes it glow green under normal lighting conditions (stuff is collectible/expensive - check before you destroy something valuable).

[Colas LeGrippa]

Hi, I'm a great slide player ( my friends say that but I am not David Lindley yet ) and I use everything I can find as a slide. Bottles of beer, pipes, fittings, small medicine bottles, wood, CD, stapler, glass mugs, wine glasses, USB keys, ceramic ashtrays, name it. I use to pick up any object on a table close to the stage, in clubs, and play a couple of runs in regular tuning, People loves that.
I love the glass cutter method to cut a bottle of beer though I wonder if this method would work on a wine bottle, way thicker. I will do the test eventually. I don't like using acetone which is dangerous and harmful.
Colas

[jjasilli]

I am available for glass cutting lessons.  I mean to take them!  I can't even make a straight cut on a pane of glass.  Years ago I bought a jig to cut wine and beer bottles.  Must still be around here some place. It was sold to make drinking glasses out of beer & wine bottles.  I used it to try to make make slides from wine bottle necks. 

The glass in the neck is thick with swirling stresses.  Hard to get a decent break.  I used a flame which tended to shatter the glass.  I never tried the hot/cold water technique.  Maybe that's better. 

Also I have thick fingers - a problem for me with most inside diameters of wine bottle necks.  And you find out only after cutting the neck! Out of numerous attempts I got one good bottle neck slide which I still have.  Interestingly it works well on radiused necks - the slanted sides & mouth section sorta work like scalloped side walls.  Straight-walled slides don't work for me on radiused necks.  Mostly I've been using brass Dunlop-style scalloped-wall slides in two different weights:  light weight slide for light weight strings, and vice-versa. 

[Colas LeGrippa]

me I don't put my finger inside the slide but hold it with all of the 5 fingers ( yes I got 5 so far, I keep 'em crossed ) of my left hand, like a steel guitar solid core slide. This way, i can alternate regular playin and slide playin in the same song

[DummyLoad]

Hi, I'm a great slide player ( my friends say that but I am not David Lindley yet ) and I use everything I can find as a slide. Bottles of beer, pipes, fittings, small medicine bottles, wood, CD, stapler, glass mugs, wine glasses, USB keys, ceramic ashtrays, name it. I use to pick up any object on a table close to the stage, in clubs, and play a couple of runs in regular tuning, People loves that.
I love the glass cutter method to cut a bottle of beer though I wonder if this method would work on a wine bottle, way thicker. I will do the test eventually. I don't like using acetone which is dangerous and harmful.
Colas

9/16" or 5/8" forged deep socket with heavy chrome plating  - old sears craftsman or snap-on. give it a try.

--pete

[jjasilli]

I need around 13/16' to fit my pinky; and around 2 1/2" in usable length.  The socket wrenches I've tried were too top heavy to control.  So I cut the top off one which I believe is bout 7/8".  It's very thick walled and only works for acoustic bottleneck with heavy strings.  I've settled on 14 gauge strings for a balance of tone & play-ability.  16 gauge are like bridge cables; 13 gauge and the resonator sparkle is gone.  But I digress.  This socket slide is still really too heavy though it has great tone.

[Colas LeGrippa]

9/16" or 5/8" forged deep socket with heavy chrome plating  - old sears craftsman or snap-on. give it a try.

I prefer the black ones, the impact wrench sockets, the tone is rawer than the chrome plated ones. But my still preferred one is the blue glass medicine bottle. I have found that a slide with the two open ends is too glassy sounding. Even with metal.  If you plug one end, you'll get a rounder sound. So, thin material plugged one end sounds better than thick material open both ends. I have still to do the test with a small medicine bulb with a drinkable vitamin serum inside, you know the bulb that you break to let the liquid get out ? Me I can use anything since I don't hold the slide no regular way. One GOOD SLIDE  is a glass of wine ( after drinking it ....). A cup does a good job too..notice that both have only one open end.

[jjasilli]

If you plug one end, you'll get a rounder sound. Now that may be worth a try; haven't done that much.  Brings to mind Duane Allman's Coricidin bottle.  But for these the inside diameter is too fat (guess I'm hard to please).  Some guys fix that with some foam rubber, but I make that way too grimy.  Anyway I'll try to find a suitable closed end slide.   

[Willabe]

I've settled on 14 gauge strings for a balance of tone & play-ability.  16 gauge are like bridge cables; 13 gauge and the resonator sparkle is gone. 

14 gauge on a resonator?

I have a couple of them and they tell you not to go over a certain gauge set of strings. You'll cave in the resonator cone.


                   Brad     

[Colas LeGrippa]

a piano string is made for a piano, after all ! 

[Colas LeGrippa]

Why don't you try a 1 in iron pipe or a nipple from which you saw the threaded ends? Available at your local hardware store ( or plumber ) for a buck or two. But whatever it is, remember that a good slide player will kick you ass from any metal socket , pipe or bottle, where a poor slide player, even with the best hand made ceramic slide ( Rocky Mountain or other ) will annoy you at maximum.
EVERYTHING is in the playing. Not the guitar nor the amp or any accessory. Remember to play YOUR EMOTIONS, NOT YOUR GEAR. An old black cotton picker plays the blues like no one else, wIth a piece of wood stringed with fishing strings.

Colas

[HotBluePlates]

I've settled on 14 gauge strings for a balance of tone & play-ability.  16 gauge are like bridge cables; 13 gauge and the resonator sparkle is gone. 

14 gauge on a resonator?

I haven't gotten a resonator yet (maybe someday soon), but I can see how that might cave in aluminum cones.

I use 13's on a short-scale Taylor GS Mini, 12's on another Taylor acoustic and my Tele and 11's on my Strat. The 11's feel very slinky to me by comparison.

I found a moderate-light touch, low action, thick strings help me do the Atkins/Reed fingerstyle stuff more easily. Some licks almost need thick strings that spring back up from the fretboard when you release them.

[jjasilli]

I've settled on 14 gauge strings for a balance of tone & play-ability.  16 gauge are like bridge cables; 13 gauge and the resonator sparkle is gone. 

14 gauge on a resonator? I have a couple of them and they tell you not to go over a certain gauge set of strings. You'll cave in the resonator cone. Brad      

Squareneck players often use 16 gauge strings.  See. e.g.:  http://www.jerrydouglas.com/faq.cfm near bottom of page.  I have a '70's Cortez* dobro copy; roundneck; spider bridge.  The seller insisted I use 16 gauge strings.  Good tone but poor playability.  13's lost tone.  Settled on 14's.  A certain bite and sustain is lost with lighter gauge strings.  On my own, I would never have thought to try strings so heavy.

This got me thinking about my pre-Gibson Dobro -- roundneck; biscuit bridge.  The original cone in this guitar collapsed some years back under 12 or 13 gauge strings!  So I replaced it with a quality cone.  I recently tried 14's on it and it sounds better. 

Also I generally tune Down to open D or G for less string tension.

_________
*I've come to like 70's Japanese lawsuit guitars: Greco; Cortley; Cortez (Now Cort) are really good; not to expensive; and suitable to customize.

[HotBluePlates]

Also I generally tune Down to open D or G for less string tension.

Now THAT's probably the deciding factor.

If you tuned up to open E or A, I bet the higher tension would result in thinner strings still giving you the zing you want.

It's why 13's don't feel heavy to me on the GS Mini; The thicker strings should equal more tension, but the short scale reduces tension. The net result is substantially the same feel as a longer scale guitar with thinner strings. Or a down-tuned guitar with thick strings.

[jjasilli]

Maybe tuning up would do that for slide.  But I've been bringing just one guitar to a gig, so it needs zing in standard tuning also.  For me the resonator zing is also reduced in standard tuning with 13 gauge or lower strings.  So I use 14's on those guitars and tune down for open tunings; and sometimes capo back up for a higher key.  As a blues player I find the idea of 14 ga strings to be appalling, and can only get them mail order.  But the tone difference got me hooked.

BTW: on my Martin D28 I use 12 ga strings, with the G-string reduced from 25 to 22 ga, for which I buy an extra individual string. I'd prefer to use 11's or lighter, but the guitar really dislikes anything lower than 13's.  So we've reached a working compromise.  When I gig with the Martin I play slide on that and tune down also.

[alerich]

About 30 years ago I bought three Jim Dunlop Series 215 glass slides. Heavy gauge - medium size. I bought one to play and two spares. Thirty years later I am still using the original slide and still have the the spares packed away. I cannot believe I played all these years and bunches of gigs and that original slide has survived.

[3choplex]

I score around the bottle neck with a triangular file, then heat it on the mark with an electric stove element. Light tap on the bottle neck and it comes off. Then comes hours of sanding.

[lego4040]

Ive never had good results with the string method, I had better results scoring the neck with a glass cutter then soaking in hot water and then ice. My Dad uses a round carbon cutter blade, I think its carbon but definitely round. Copper slides are ok if your using thick walled stuff. Brass is better and thick aluminum  pipe sounds really nice