We just purchased our first home in a small, quaint and charming little town in northern Wisconsin. Let the fun begin! While raising our six blessings, we are going to attempt to revitalize our cozy Dutch Colonial Revival home. Follow along and see what we learn, discover, and overcome in the process. It is sure to be a houseful of laughs!

Bottle Cleaning Process

As you know, we discovered hundreds of bottles while excavating the original outhouse located on our property. Rather than create hundreds of blog entries for each bottle, we decided to create a separate page in which to feature these great finds. While we appreciate the history and uniqueness of our find, we do not necessarily want to keep them all. If anyone is interested in purchasing one of the bottles we describe, feel free to let us know. We are more than happy to negotiate. Be sure to keep checking our Bottles for Sale page to see what we have added or sold.

When we first dug out the bottles, they were so dirty that we did not even know that some of them featured engraved writing in the glass itself. Our best guess is that many of these bottles have been underground for more than 50 years and were buried some time in the 1940's. Using one of the bottles that we found, we are going to explain the process that we are using to clean these bottles. Obviously, we are not professional bottle cleaners so we did some research and discovered a process, through trial and error, that works for us. This first picture shows the typical condition of a dug bottle.


The first step in the process is to remove as much of the dirt, interior contents, caps, etc. as possible. Our wonderful neighbor has lent us one of her old wash basins, which has been perfect for this job. We generally soak the bottles, using dishsoap and water, for 24 to 48 hours.


By the time we are done with the first step, the water is just filthy and full of an interesting mixture of dirt, sand, ink, and whatever else was inside the bottles. A lot of the caps, when available, are so rusted that they literally crumble apart. Unfortunately, some of the bottles were corked and this process swells the corks so that we have to cut them into pieces to remove them from the bottle. Our next step in the cleaning process uses an interesting mix of toilet bowl cleaner, rice, vinegar, dishsoap and an assortment of tools like sponges, toothbrushes, Q-tips and a sewing needle.




After several hours, we manage to clean up the bottles to the best of our ability. Again, we are not professionals, so what we consider to be "finished" may not result in a perfectly clean bottle, but one that we have done our best with the constraints of time and materials. With that being said, we are proud of how clean we are able to get most of the bottles with our process.



Once the unpleasant task of cleaning up the bottles is done, then the fun begins. Using the markings, etchings or, when available, the information on the cap, we begin to research the history of the bottle. We try to find out which company manufactured the bottle, who it was manufactured for, and what the bottle originally contained. For example, this particular bottle was manufactured by the Owens-Illinois Glass Company for Brooks Catsup. What makes this bottle so interesting, at least to us, is that these bottles have a matching water tower! (For more information, see the Bottles for Sale page.) After we have completed our research, we "bag and tag" each bottle individually.


We are also keeping track of pertinent information about each bottle in an Excel spreadsheet (just in case someone is interested in the entire collection). Of course, prior to bagging the bottle, we will take pictures of it and post the information on our Bottles for Sale page for anyone interested in purchasing one of our bottles.

2 comments:

  1. How do you know how much to ask for the bottles? I'm just curious because we found two buried in our yard from the OBC.

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    1. We have discovered that, for the most part, the bottles are not really worth a whole lot; however, to get a general idea on the market for a specific bottle, your best bet is to look for the bottle on Ebay. Good luck!

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