Antique Bottle Cleaning Tips
Posted on November 11, 2007
Filed Under Bottle Cleaning |
I still have many old bottles that need to be cleaned. So here’s my bottle cleaning plan:
I will always first try warm soapy water with a bottle brush, maybe a little sand or rice (for slight abrasion).
Muriatic Acid, which is easily available at hardware stores has helped reduce some of light hazing on some of my bottles. I soaked one bottle for several days and this worked quite well, but this was an accident, I didn’t mean to leave it in so long. You might not want to soak that long, but every dirty bottle is different. Lime-Away seems to work for removing water/calcium stains.
I have heard that stronger cleaning can be done with diluted IronOut or Wink, but it is not recommended to leave your bottles in such chemicals for more than 20 minutes.
Glenn Pochs gives some additional tips:
“For a hazed bottle the only solution is to have it proffesionaly cleaned or if you have a cleaner yourself. The cleaner consists of a tumbling device that holds the bottle in the center (horizontally) copper shot (cut copper wire) is poured into the cylinder
along with the bottle half full, a soultion of water and aluminum oxide or tin-oxide extremely fine (used for glass polish) is used, the bottle is run 3-5 days and the cylinder is turned once halfway. Machines like this can be ordered through (bottle) magazines and found a many bottle shows (cost $300-500), its a messy time consuming event to clean yourself but sometimes you get superb results, I figure the
breakage percentage to be around 5% (including minor damage) - so you
take a risk but it can really improve your bottle. Proffesional cleaners charge $15-20 a bottle.”
If you plan to use chemicals to clean your antique bottles, for heavens sake, please take appropriate precautions: ventilation, skin and eye protection.
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I have an antique cut glass perfume bottle, which the perfume became crystallized with the stopper still in! I bought it like that hoping I could get the crystals to dissolve. I’ve had it sitting in glycerin for several days but no change. Have you any tip on how to dissolve the crystals? Thanks, Marcia
I think for tough stuff, I would try a bit of bleach, and if that doesn’t work diluted muriatic acid, but not leave it in too long. Acids are usually good at dissolving stains, so they should dissolve difficult crytals as well. be very careful if choosing a chemical to help you with your cleaning, and never mix cchemicals…Good luck.