Bottle Tumbling / Polishing
I
regularly clean bottles for my collection to remove internal & external
sickness or staining using a tumble polishing technique to greatly improve the
bottle’s appearance.
It’s
worth noting that although it will improve the bottles appearance, it’s not a
magic process that will turn a damaged bottle into a mint condition example. (I
can remove sickness and staining but chips, deep scratches and pitting are
there to stay!).
I
use a slightly less aggressive variation of the technique than most tumblers
which has a number of advantages and disadvantages over the more commonly used
technique;
|
Advantage |
Disadvantage |
|
·
Easier to avoid damage to bottle (e.g. loss of
embossing) as each stage takes longer |
·
Takes longer to clean the bottle |
|
·
Leaves a more natural finish, (“under-cleans” rather
than “over-cleans” to quote the US terminology) – Many tumbled bottles can
look “too clean” and look obviously tumbled |
·
Doesn’t remove pitting or deep scratches |
|
·
Suitable for more delicate items such as local medicine
bottles |
|
For
slightly dull items just requiring a minor external polish I use a mechanical
buffing technique with a specialist polishing compound in order to enhance the
appearance without resorting to tumbling.
Before
& After photos of my cleaning results are shown below on a variety of
bottles.
Our current product range; Click thumbnail for details
of each item
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