How Bottleneck Slides Were Made - The Burning String Method 

That background music wasn't edited in, it just follows this guy wherever he goes.

He looks like if jack white was in skynyrd

Take a copper wire, strip off the insulation, twist the wire around the neck, leave a piece that stands out at a 90 degree angle, and heat the piece of wire that sticks out using a blow torch. The heat will be conducted through the wire to the glass. The results are more controllable than with a string.

This is the character with all the stories that teaches you how to upgrade your weapons and tools once you reach level 15

This is pure gold. OG stuff

Why is country Eric Andre teaching me things!

I purchased a bottle of coraceden aspirin back in the 70's. Still got it, still use it ! The headache was horrible but the sound of the bottle afterwards became history. 😎

its a known fact that every time a man is using kerosine for anything he always smells his fingers first

You did a great job after having that whole bottle of spirits...without injuries.👍🏻😊Please show us more of these interesting ancient Blues hacks!

this dude look like eric andre with additional girth

Think ah'll sit out in the porch an' write a song abat ma dawg.

Jack white and Justin Johnsons son is a handy fella

Be really careful with this. I sliced my thumb tendon when the bottle broke. Glass is unforgiving. The slide I made is still the best after 20 years though lol.

I have never had as good a result with the string method. I end up with jagged or uneven edges. I use the boiling water/ ice water method. You score the neck where you want it to break, then submerge it upside down in boiling water up to the scored mark for about a minute. Then submerge the heated neck in ice water and it snaps right off, slick, even and smooth. The only clean up you need is some emery cloth to the sharp edge.

Years ago I was without a guitar slide. In my student living complex, drunk, I attempted to do this by soaking a rope in lighter fluid and wrapping that around the neck of the bottle hoping it would make the neck brittle enough for a cleanish break. I set the fire alarm off in the process and all residents had to evacuate the premises. Buy a glass cutter or a slide ;)

I feel a great heart in this man!

Will never forget the first time I got a slider, It was a beautiful stained blue glass, as soon as I got home I placed it on a table just to watch it...you imagine it...slide...

I legitimately always wondered how the folks would do this back in the day, thanks for showing this, awesome! Subbed!

My grandma says this is also the technique they used for canning when she grew up, because they couldn't afford proper canning jars, and all things were reused. They put the string around the bottle necks of beer and pop bottles, heated them and knocked them off to make canning jars. I could be remembering wrong, but I could swear my grandpa said they used boiling water in the process of whacking the necks off. The lid for the canning jars was paraffin wax.

If you ever find an old aspirin bottle from the 1920's at an antiques shop, that'll do the trick too. Your technique works very well with petroleum jelly also and it burns longer than kerosene.

This is something I never knew I wanted to know. Thanks

34 year ago I made my slide from a wine bottle neck. I scored the bottle well with a glass cutter then knocked the bottle on a railroad tie. It broke off perfectly! I still have this slide even after it falling to the ground a few times over the years!

My advice: don’t drink the bottle just before making the bottleneck

I just asked Chat GPT how this object is called and this is the first video I opened then. Haha. Really nice. Hello from Romania. Keep singing. :)

It'll cost me more to buy these tools then buying a slide lol. I already own a nice brass one but I like having things I've made myself. Thanks for the video friend.

Your voice gives me a wholsome feeling inside. The most relaxing southern drawl. Much love and thanks for showing me this. Peace be with you brother. Keep on truckin

This is very reminiscent of a method used to open extremely old sherry bottles. Since the corks usually won't hold together due to age, the server applies heated tongs to the base of the bottle neck, then brushes it with ice water to snap the neck off. The sherry is then filtered through cloth into a decanter to prevent any glass getting in the drink. Whole process takes about 3 minutes tableside.

man, I`ve tried the first bottle with variety of methods without glass cutter and it didnt work. I`ve tried yours - it worked first try! Thanks a lot!

We're glad to see you back buddy 😁

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I was a Boy Scout. I like the warning at the end Edward, "be careful when you make these things...your slide playin might summon up the devil himself" Top notch brother. Love your channel and your playing. Keeping it real in the backwoods of wherever. Cheers.

Man I haven't seen you in ages! You taught me how to play Crossroad Blues!!!

Keepin that stuff alive brother .you rock

Man, awesome video. Sharing old tricks

Love this guys whole vibe

Dude. This blew me away! Imagine what I’ll learn tomorrow!

My man, we had a kerosene heater to back in tha day growing up, before they ever had metal cages around them, I backed up one night N sat down by accident. ...anyway, love slide, blues, rock, doin it old ways,....

Been trying to do that with my whiskey bottles for years...now I know how to do it right...Thanks bro!

How interesting Thank you for sharing 'those good ole' tricks' People knew how to make life good times back in the days Appreciate you😚

Best 4:03 minutes of my day so far

Fun video...Nice resonator and good slide making tips!

man this is the most badass music thing I've seen

I was literally going to buy a slide today. Gonna try this. seems like a fun project. Thanks

Way to make me feel like I'm back home with one video.

If you distill your own 'shine (and shame on you if you do, shame!), you can save the heads which are mostly methanol and use it in place of kerosene. It's a good way to avoid wasting it.

good to see your back

I love learning the old school hacks, tips, tricks!!

Thank you Edward for the great video

Great method Edward - greetings from Poland!

Nice one. Have made a few with my son. Good way to pas some time. Love your music.👍👍👍

We had a kerosene heater when I was a kid and yeah stinky

If you leave the cork in the bottleneck, you can even play pop music. Or you could call it bottleneck pop blues. Will definitely be giving it a go. Got loads of empty wine bottles kicking around the house. Chairs for the vid.

love these videos where you do something different then cover songs

Great video. Seen this in a few old blues docos and was wondering on the exact technique.

Done this its tough to score the bottle! Never knew about the string trick, thats a game changer!

Cool information! Love the music too.

Love the background music very much as well! 🎶👌🏻

Awesome Edward

Cool trick! I have some old wine bottles I've been saving to make slides. I'll give this a try. Thanks!👍😎🎸🎶

We had a kerosene fridge (true..., look it up) for years.

Thanks man this works great. Thicker glass bottles seem to break nicer.

You’ve restored my faith in........everything.

I just found your Channel I'm glad I did. I hit like subscribed and click the Bell icon. This is a great video good homemade remedy for something. I think you might be able to do the same thing without a flame. My friend's Dad Percy was a jack of all trades, a blacksmith, carpenter, you name it, he could do anything just about anything. He always used to score glass with a glass cutter. He would score it several times not just once, get a real deep score and then he would take a little brush dip it in turpentine and wipe the little brush full of turpentine down the scoreline. Percy said the turpentine was the secret. It would snap off beautifully with no sharp edges I've never seen anybody do that except Percy Gates, most people just score it once, twice if you're lucky and snap it off. About half the time doesn't want to snap off evenly and they have to cut two or three panes of glass just to get one good one when they're trying to cut down a glass pane to a small pane for the old-time windows with individual glass panes in them like I have in my house. I was thinking if you had a glass cutter and you scored the bottle round and round and round several times your string would work a lot better because you would have a deeper cut line than a filel would make unless you have what they call a slitting file which is a really squatted or flat diamond shaped file, if you look at the nose of the file you'll see what I'm talkin about. It's a very narrow width diamond shape it's specifically for cutting notches in things. I think you could score with a glass cutter and then take this file and cut down really deeply all the way around and use the turpentine trick tap the bottle or the string (you can soak your string in turpentine instead of kerosene) like you're doing and do it either way I think you would get a more clean break even if you didn't use a slitting file if you just used a glass cutter and went around it several times. You'd get a deeper score than what you're making with the file. I couldn't really see what kind of file you had because I'm watching it on the cell phone and the picture is kind of small. You can get a diamond slitting file on eBay for around $20 and those would probably cut glass the best. A regular hardened steel slitting file would work also. Thanks for a great video. I'll have to try this out. God Bless You & Your Family!! Jimmy in NC....

I like this guy and his accent

That's brilliant! I must try it...first to finish a bottle.

Super, Genial und einfach. Danke für das Video!

awesome. i used to find old green medicine bottles buried in old trash piles out in the woods in Georgia. those things are valued these days but i took them for granted

Learn something new every so often

Respect to this channel

We used kerosene heaters and lamps, the top of the heater would get really hot so you had to be careful. Another fuel I used was naphtha for fire eating and fire blowing , it burns clean and is the best for fire eating and blowing. Great video by the way!!

Pretty cool trick. Thanks

I had a friend that made a gravity bong this way

Almost thought I was watching an Eric Andre skit, but this video is cool not gonna lie

Thank you for this!

"Yeah it works", this dude is fucking awesome.

My fave slide is a small section from a discarded metal chair. Works great. My other fave slide is an old brown glass throat losenge bottle. Quite a marked difference in sound between glass and metal slides. You wouldn't imagine that there would be....but there is.

Simple but works ! Thanks I'm gonna try a couple myself

Clever! Thanks for showing how.

Cool man, gonna make my own real soon. Thanks!

I used to do this. You can also do it to 32 oz Pepsi bottles and make nice drinking glasses. If you have a sandblaster in an air compressor that's a real nice job of cleaning up the edge. You can also do one gallon pickle jars to make glass containers to set over plants in the springtime.

Thanks for the video.👍

CHEERS Edward for that fascinating bottleneck glass slide engineering video ! :) You are very intelligent and clever ! well done to you mate : ) Greetings to you from Ryan McDonald a kiwi from New Zealand ! :)

Awesome man

good vid buddy! keep em up!!!!

this guy is a vibe

Sweet, gonna try this.

My dad made his this bottle=neck in a similar way; born 1918 played guitar and had rack around his neck to hold his harmonic, and he had a very good singing voice. He cut a 78 record titled "Back up and Push" and other side, "Down Yonder". I miss him more everyday and learn to appreciate him in a different light often. Thinking back over the years, just how many ways he was always there for me, with me...no matter what. Thank God for him. Take a step back, and learn to appreciate all the people in your life.

That was very interesting! Thank you for sharing! 😁

Nice little trick

Keep rockin brother

This is some good stuff

Thanks for sharing your information! 😎👍

You saved me a trip to the hardware store. I got files but no glass cutter.

This video is amazing, thank you!!!

This is the most useful Eric Andre video I've ever seen

Super simple! Cool!

We had a kerosene heater when I was kid too. I remember when I was little, my dad's van didn't have any heat, so we'd take it with us when we went to town in the winter. Keep the windows cracked, or we'll pass out. Lol! I definitely wouldn't do that nowadays, but back then, we made do with what we had.

Glass is actually harder than most steel. The sharpest knife is an obsidian surgical knife used in heart surgery because it cuts so fine and leaves little scarring and similar to some flint knives used by ancient humans. John Logie Baird patented a glass razor blade but no one would make it because it lasted too long.

Very nice, Kerosene (also known as aviation fuel) is just very useful to keep around in general.

That's awesome! Thanks

Good one mate