Glue bottle tutorial

The glue bottle template has a symmetrical shape with a long straight bottle neck and a beautiful slightly curved body. In my opinion, the most difficult part of this template is the adjoining part between body and neck.  In this tutorial, some basic techniques and special method will help you to make the glue bottle skin, especially the adjoining part; and solve some questions you probably will meet. Also some tips are written on the tutorial, this tips and reflections are drawn from my mistakes and experience that I want to share with you which would be helpful for you.

Tutorial has 3 parts and each parts has few steps and tips to show you how to make the skin.

Part1: Measurement and Cutting

Step 01:

Prepare a 1.6 mm metal sheet*, then follow the template to draw the bottle shape and marked the major elements and points on the metal*, you can use my drawing as a reference, or you can just reference to your plywood model*.

Tip 1: All metal sheet can be purchased on the Dalsteel Metals shop. We can get UNSW student discount from that shop. 1.6 mm 5005 aluminium sheets are recommended on this project. You can drive to their shop to buy metal with your mate together to save the delivery fee.

Tip 2: Pencil or marker are both fine to draw the reference line, I prefer to use black marker pen to draw the line which is easily recognised and is good for accurate cut.

Tip 3: Draw the bottle shape larger than the template (10mm), this can be used later when you make the skin. Also draw the neck curve deeper as the diagram shown below.

Step 02:

On this project, both large cutting machine (guillotine) and metal scissors will be used. The guillotine is primarily designed to cut sheet metals with fine and straight finish. Put your metal on the guillotine, slide your work under the guard and line up your reference line with the bottom blade*. When you have your work in the correct position you need to press down on it so it cannot move then push down on the foot pedal to complete the cut. In this case, we use guillotine to cut the metal into small part for later use. Then follow the reference line, we use scissors* to slightly cut the shape and try to get a clean shape without rough edges. 

Tip 4: Guillotine is very easy and safe machine to use. Before you cut the metal, make sure the reference line is exactly line up with the bottom blade, you can slowly adjust your work with patience.

Tip 5: You can get your toes or your friends crushed under the foot pedal. So you must be aware of those around you and before you make your cut make sure that nobody have their foot in the area where the pedal crashes into the floor.

Tip 6: Scissors has two colours, red for right hand and yellow for left hand, make sure you pick the right one, otherwise it will make your work really hard.

Part2: Rolling and shaping

Step 03:

After get the shape, put your work into the Slip Rollers. Slip Rollers allows you to put simple cylindrical or conical curves in sheet material by passing the material through three rollers. The first two are the pressure feed rollers that can be adjusted to the thickness of the material so that it can be lightly clamped to feed through the machine without marking the material. The third roller (behind the feed rollers) is referred to as the curving or radius roller, which can be adjusted, up or down, so the material from the feed rollers can be bent to a radius*. The radius is define by your template, and can be adjusted later on.

Step 04:

Because it is hard to achieve two different radius on one object by using Slip Roller, then we can use vice *to shape two radius for ‘neck’ and ‘body’ separately. Put the metal into the vice, and then tighten the vice and let the body become more curve on both sides. Do the same method again on the neck part. Then we can get rough curved shape at the moment.

Step 05

Draw a curve line between the neck and the bottom part, the position of the line is defined by your template. Find a wooden stake dolly on the lab*which has the curve edge fit to your object. Put your skin against the wooden stake dolly, let your marked line match the dolly’s curved edge. Use a sharp edge wooden hammer to hit the line, the neck will gradually curved in and after half an hour, the rough shape of the bottle occur. After that, reverse the skin, put the skin against the curve edge then hit it again, which will make the shape more significant.

Tip7: wooden stake dolly can be shaped to fit your object and your requirement, ask Anthony who work on the lab for help, he is very kind and can teach you a lot.

 

  

Part 3: Smooth and refine

Step 06:

Once we finished the major shape, then we can put the skin on the tapered steel T-dolly, firstly use the wooden hammer lightly tap the edge to define the final edge and then use the Planishing hammer to lightly form the bottle from the edges to the middle. After that, the radius probably would change a little bit, we can repeat step 4, use the vice to correct the radius again.

Tip8:  When you use Planishing hammer to refine your work, try to tap the skin lightly with enough patience, make sure the skin is not deformed on the process. When tapping the skin, try to let the middle part to touch the surface, let the hammer perpendicular to the skin, otherwise there will be some ugly mark left on the skin.

You can use English wheel to smooth and stretch your skin if it is necessary, sometimes it will give your skin glossy, shining finish.

Step 07:

This is an additional approach, if you want your skin more fit to your template, you can place your skin on the template and then use the planishing hammer to smooth the surface and get rid of marks left in the process of forming the skin’s shape.