How to get scuff marks off of bottles?

[bcboy]

I normaly post my finds here but this time I have a question about cleaning bottles. I find a lot of nice bottles and many of them have fine surface scratches and scuff marks on them that dont clean off well with just water and soap and i was wondering if anyone has come up with a good way to buff out these small scratches and scuff marks and so that these bottles look close to new again? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

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[SODABOTTLEBOB]

bcboy ~

It sounds like you are talking about actual scratches in the glass itself. And if this is the case, it likely would take a special buffing wheel and the talents of a proffesional to correct the problem, with the cost of the service possibly exceeding the value of the bottle itself. And if you are referring to scratches to the applied color labeling, then I would say that too would be very costly. My personal opinion would be to just leave them as they are and hope you find better examples in the future. I once had an old map restored that had some minor water staining and a few minute tears, and it cost me $350.00 to have it fixed. Which I didn't know going into the project as the restorer person gave me an initial estimate of only $75.00. There are glass experts that can even fully restore broken and/or cracked bottles, but, once again, the cost of this is sky-high and usually frowned upon by the collecting community.

Anyway, that's my "2-cent bottle deposit" worth of advise. Good luck and good hunting in the future.

SODABOTTLEBOB

 

[Harry Pristis]

I normaly post my finds here but this time I have a question about cleaning bottles. I find a lot of nice bottles and many of them have fine surface scratches and scuff marks on them that dont clean off well with just water and soap and i was wondering if anyone has come up with a good way to buff out these small scratches and scuff marks and so that these bottles look close to new again? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

As long as they are not too deep (scuffs versus scratches), they can be tumble-polished to a high gloss. You can send your bottles to someone to do the job, or set yourself up to do it for several hundred dollars.

 

[SODABOTTLEBOB]

Harry ~

I've never fully researched this tumbling process, but I'm curious to know what effect it would have on ACLs? Would tumbling them to correct glass problems mess up the paint?

Thanks,

SBB

 

[Harry Pristis]

You could clean up the inside of an ACL soda or milk bottle, but you'd have to tumble it in a dry cylinder 'cause the medium would take the enamel off the exterior in a flash.

 

[SODABOTTLEBOB]

Harry ~

Thanks.

That's kind of what I thought. And this should benifit bcboy as well, especially as he did not specify exactly what type of bottles he was inquiring about.

SBB

 

[Marty-Graw]

one thing you CAN do is rub them down with baby oil......it wont take the scratches out but it will hide them pretty good and shine them a little for display

 

[bcboy]

Hi there, thanks for all the help and I think ill try the baby oil and see how that works. Sorry, I should of been more specific, the kind of bottles I want to clean the scuff marks and scratches off of are just plain glass bottles, none of them have any paint or lables or anything on them, for example, something like the bottle below. Thanks again.

 

[gleaner1]

You can hand-buff out light scuffs and sick patches with a damp cloth and fine aluminum oxide dust. Get a big bucket of elbow grease. You can use cloth wheels on a motor with the alum oxide, it will be quicker, fill bottle with water for cooling, and don't over work the piece, it could locally over-heat and crack.

I always suspected you could use 2000 grit wet-sanding paper and soapy water to dress up bad ACL's patterns, but never tried.