Rez said:How do you cut them so neatly?
Hi Rez, (that phrase has a familiar sound to it, like "high resolution")
It has occurred to a lot of people independently that soda bottles could make good pots. By trial and error I have perfected a process that I like. I plan to document my whole "process" for making soda bottle pots in a "Community Idea" submission, including step-by-step photos. But I am a bit busy setting up my indoor zinnia project for the time being, so I will just document my process for cutting the pots neatly. And that will serve to answer your question.
The first step is to mark the top edge of the pot accurately with a Sharpie™ pen. I wanted some sort of "jig" that would help hold the Sharpie steadily and reproducibly at the desired height. I looked around for something that would serve, and found a wire CD stack holder. We had a lot of CDs and several of these stack holders, so I rearranged some CDs to "free up" one of the holder frames for this project. You could use pretty much anything for this purpose, like a stack of books or whatever, but this was handy and available. Incidentally, you can click on these pictures for bigger versions. The embedded pictures here are essentially just large thumbnails to the "real" version, which is not necessarily square like the thumbnail.
You hold the Sharpie against the pot and rotate the pot by twisting the top of the pot. I choose to make the line up as high on the pot as I can, for maximum depth for the pot. I don't want any "curve in" at the top rim of the pot, so I stop at the top of the straight side of the pot. I identify the wire I am using to steady the Sharpie with a bit of tape. I do want all of my pots to be the same size for uniformity.
With the line drawn, you have merely to cut the top of the bottle off at that line. My original idea was that I would make the cut with an X-Acto™ knife. I simply wasn't accurate enough with the knife to follow the line, so I compromised and just used the X-Acto to "rough cut" off the top of the bottle, staying roughly 3/4-inch above the line. I use scissors to cut off the rough-cut border.
I choose to cut leaving the black Sharpie line on the pot, but that is a matter of personal preference. You could go either way on that.
Like I mentioned, I plan to document my whole process of soda-pot production in an illustrated Community Idea, but this can serve as a sample of that. There is nothing unique in the methods I have chosen. Whatever works for you is fine. As the old saying goes,
"There are many ways to skin a cat." (Probably none of them legal, particularly if you are a cat lover.)
ZM
