There’s Good News… and there’s Bad News

The good news is that the paint stayed on the bottles perfectly. The bad news… well you can see the bad news in the picture.

Wine bottles are not weighted evenly. Before placing wine bottles on my kiln shelf, I always place them on a flat surface first. When they stop rolling I make sure to put the bottle in the kiln with the same side up. For insurance, I also place a kiln post on the edge of my bottle just in case they do roll. I’ve never had one roll until today and I am glad I had the kiln post set up!

With the painted bottles I obviously wanted the painted side up. But that wasn’t the side that wanted to stay up. I placed the bottles very gingerly and did get the painted side to stay up but it really wanted to roll. And roll it did! I know there are several methods to keep bottles from rolling like using fiber paper, kiln wash, or frit as shims. I am pretty sure they will all leave a mark behind on the glass. Maybe it won’t matter on the dark glass. Guess I’ll have to experiment to see which is the least obvious.

6 thoughts on “There’s Good News… and there’s Bad News

  1. chaniarts says:

    they will all leave a mark. i haven’t found anything that doesn’t.

    i have some stainless steel U shaped pieces that i lay under the neck, just barely raising that ends of the bottle up. not only does that give you a handle when slumped, it prevents rolling.

    another is to stuff the neck with densely packed used fibre paper. that also gives you a handle, but seems to prevent rolling. i don’t know why. perhaps when it gets to the slumping stage and the neck sags, it touches down and isn’t round, so stops a roll.

    i’m going to steal that post idea. that’s a good one.

  2. Joyce @ Harmony says:

    We put a 3/4″ piece of clear stringer under the bottle to keep it from rolling. You can see it if you look for it but it’s not too obvious.

  3. Mary says:

    I have been using a little bit of rolled up or folded fiber paper against each edge. It leaves a mark but as it is underneath where the bottom slumps toward the top which is very thick anyway I don’t find that it really shows much. Even on the clear bottles I don’t think it is unsightly.

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