# Molds



## Sand_pontil (Jan 19, 2014)

How rare is it to come by an old bottle mold. Were most of them destroyed? Were they wood or steel or what was most common? Any info or links to info would be greatly appreciated.


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## RED Matthews (Jan 19, 2014)

Hello Sand-pontil and anyone else:I have quite a few molds in different places.  I have molds that we made for special projects when I was doing special research.  I have a mold for a ketchup and one for the Ancient Age bottle, where we did no machining in the glass contact area had no machining done in the cavities.  These inserts were electro-formed creating the glass contact areas.  I have a Coca Cola mold half made of bronze.  And castings for some components I used to sell.  I guess I should have saved a lot of them.  Most used ones went back to foundries for remelt.  If you have questions - I will try to answer them.  RED Matthews


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## RED Matthews (Jan 19, 2014)

Hi again -  I went back up to your post and realized that I could answer another question.  Molds for most bottles have been made of cast iron.  The earliest molds were made of stone I think. Then they were made of wood for several years.  Bottles out of wooden molds can have two special identifying characteristics.  One is that the seams of the mold segments would burn and produce a raised rib of glass where the wood was burned away on the seam edge.  These wooden molds were made of apple wood and several close grain woods.  When used they were kept soaking in water prior to use.  I have glass examples of this seam burning.  I also have glass examples out of ceramic molds and wooden molds where the glass would have thick and thin glass that would look like there is a thousand dots of glass thicker in the bottle wall because of the temperature differentials.  Back to the iron molds people go it in their heads that the thick and thin glass in bottle walls was caused by whittle in the mold.  You don't whittle iron mold cavities - what they were talking about was the thick and thin glass caused by areas of cold mold cavity areas that made the glass thicker on those cold areas.  I have a write up about that in my home page.  The ceramic molds were also kept wet - and the glass out of them had a rough texture to the glass surface. I could go on for another hour but my wife will be yelping soon enough.   RED Matthews


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## RED Matthews (Jan 19, 2014)

Well I guess I need to do another blog on mold materials and the glass out of different mold materials.  I just went back through about thirty different posted threads and really got concerned about a lot of concepts that need some coverage - regarding mold materials and recognition of them on the bottles people find. ]I recently was in touch with my friend Bill Lindsey asking about paste molded glass and got a lot of scoop and help from him.  I'll bet there a lot of you that can't tell when you have a bottle from a paste mold.  Don't feel bad but I have three or four of them and will try and cover this some more - wow.  I have a good six or more blogs in process right now.   RED Matthews


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## RED Matthews (Jan 23, 2014)

HELLO AGAIN.  I am finding that there are people in this forum that do not know about the principles of Turn-Mold or Paste-Mold operations that were involved with making a lot of glass items - bottles and rose-bowls for example that do not have any or very little showing of mold seams.  I have several bottles with this showing of the past painted inside the mold so the bottle could be rotated with the blow-pipe or other mechanical methods that wiped out the mold seams.  The best thing for you to do is check out the following link to the SHA coverages done by Bill Lindsey. [id="yui_3_13_0_ym1_1_1390356589156_44330"]Bill LindseySHA/BLM Historic Glass Bottle ID & Information Websitewww.sha.org/bottle/index.htm  email: bill@historicbottles.com [/b]
 This is important because I have a handled whiskey bottle with only two spots of seam showing.  I have tooled crown cap beers and sodas with out seams, some wines and other items.  So I think it is important to your knowledge about mold equipment used, and why.

RED Matthews


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## cowseatmaize (Jan 23, 2014)

Maybe this is what you were trying Red. Let me know and I'll edit your post.http://www.sha.org/bottle/body.htm#Turn molds


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## RED Matthews (Jan 23, 2014)

Hi Eric   I don't know where that preceding junk came from ahead of Bill Lindsey's name.  I have just ran into postings that tell me that there a lot of people that don't realize that a lot of round bottles had the mold seams wiped out by turning the glass or the mold assembly.  I have several of them and the painted past is very visible on a lot of them.  I have tooled crown finish beers and soda bottles that had the mold turned.  What amasses me is when there are twist lines under the applied finish glass, put there by the blowpipe turning twisting the neck glass.  I tried to get some response help from someone regarding this - but it just concerns me that a lot of things are not discussed or covered.  I hate to hunt for the new posts by going to the next thread over things I have seen several times.  I would like to keep up with the new postings for an hour or two each day.  Tell me how to do it.  I am now trying to tag each of my bottles and glass items - because some day my daughter Connie will have to sell them.  As long as I can keep going I will be spending as much time with bottles as I can.  It has been my life for 76 years + now.  I even got two new ones for Christmas this year.  A neat wood molded demijohn that has what I think might be a white lead coated glass dip on the punty rod.  The other one has a hand tooled internal thread.  I am really trying to get some glass with these hand tooled threads.  I guess the tool had to give the proper lead for the capping or plug threads to match.   Thanks if you can take out that extra BS that the computer put in.   RED Matthews


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## buzzkutt033 (Jan 23, 2014)

molds for the bottles of the 19th century in America are mostly cast iron and are tough to come by. i found them to be very expensive and most difficult to find. i'd love to have anexample or two to go with my bottle collection. i love to read Red's posts. nothing likehaving access to his years of hands on experience in the field of glass making. jim


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## RED Matthews (Jan 29, 2014)

Yes Eric  I think you are right.  I went to this article and it is part of the story.  Years ago when I retired from Thatcher Glass to sell our metals to the worlds glass industry - I got acquainted with Bill Lindsey's work and printed a big 3" book of his information.  I traveled and made presentations at glass industry seminars for about 22 years.  After retirement the old bottle study has kept me involved with special glass studies and collecting.  Change it or add it to the post.  I never know who gets into the information but I enjoy helping the newbies to the hobby.   I just talked for a good hour on the phone with an old Mold man that worked in the American Overmyer Mold Company that transferred to their mold shop in Belgium and we had a great business discussion about today's bottle making world.  He told me that he just recently was told that they are running multiple machines on a beverage bottle set-up making 900 btls/min.   He is going to send me one of the bottles to study.  We discussed the worlds mold making to his knowledge at this time and about the two biggest mold shops in the world as of now.  Not American.  I think he said Bulgaria and China.  He didn't know about the Mexican shop so I will be talking o another old mold buddy soon.  RED Mathews


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