# E.HIGGINS OROVILLE headed for the tumbler



## donalddarneille (Apr 11, 2010)

Recently aquired this blob and I am getting ready to give it a spin. The only concern I have is the lip chips. The chips appear to be old, possibly from a cork being pried out, and have no cracks leading from them. Should I be concerned about them developing into more damage as a result of the tumbling process?


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## donalddarneille (Apr 11, 2010)

A shot of the full bottle. I obtained this one for tumbling practice, and then realized it is one of the few bottles I own with the "San Francisco Curved R". Now I'm a little hesitant about damage I could cause by tumbling, but the blob top appears rather sturdy to me. Mostly wondering if anyone has experiance tumbling a bottle with this kind of damage, and if so what the results were. Thanks for looking!


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## chosi (Apr 12, 2010)

My experience has been that the tumbler will just sort of round off the sharp edges around lip chips, but doesn't make them any worse.
 I started putting some nail polish on the lip chips just to avoid that, or at least reduce the effects.


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## GuntherHess (Apr 12, 2010)

Chips dont seem to change much from tumbling, cracks are what you have to worry about. Also round bottles dont get stressed much in a tumbler.


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## donalddarneille (Apr 12, 2010)

Thanks for the tip Mike, I'm going to load it in a tube tonight and get it started.

 After pics of the bottle, or the shards, should be up in a week.


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## BarbaraInCalif (Apr 13, 2010)

We lived in Oroville for around 15 years...it's great to see a bottle from there!


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## donalddarneille (Apr 13, 2010)

Hi Matt, didn't see your post on here when I last replied, thanks for the info. I just recently switched from glass bead to copper, so the extra weight had me concerned. It's in and purring along now for a few hours, havn't heard any strange noises yet!

 Barbara, did you see many of these sodas while you lived there? I didn't even know Oroville existed until I saw this bottle. Any interesting town history you could pass along?


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## BarbaraInCalif (Apr 13, 2010)

Oroville is an old gold mining town along the Feather River, in the Sierra Nevada foothills north of Sacramento. We moved  there in 1982, a newlywed childless couple (BC) and left in 1995 with three kids! needless to say, there was neither the time nor money to spend on bottles back then.  At the Chico show in March there was a collector from Oroville who was displaying lots and lots of bottles from there.  They were exciting to see!


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## donalddarneille (Apr 13, 2010)

Wow, got there with no children and left with three, must be something in the water! Maybe that's what E.Higgins was selling in these bottles.


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## donalddarneille (Apr 20, 2010)

A pic part of the way through. Only filled the copper up enough to barely miss the lip, and just ran the bottle with polish. Now I need to decide if I should re-run the bottle with a cutter to remove scratches and case wear, or just leave it "as found" and enjoy the beauty of a natural bottle. Any comments for or against will be appreciated. Should I fill the tube with copper and cut then re-polish the bottle, or leave it as it is?


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## donalddarneille (Apr 20, 2010)

Try pic again.....


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## surfaceone (Apr 20, 2010)

Hey Donald,

 That looks about done to me. I was wonderin if you'd spun the embossing right off that guy by now. Nice job.


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## BarbaraInCalif (Apr 20, 2010)

I was just about ready to ask for an update too!
 But who am I to ask....I've been rotating a couple of bottles in and out of the tumbler for 4 months and they are finally ALMOST done.  A lot has been learned in those 4 months too...could blame it on the glass beads, but the slow learning curve is due to my experimental what-if process.

 The Higgins is done when it looks like YOU want it to look!
 Really liking bold embossing, I've been playing with covering it with different agents when trying to smooth out heavily worn bottles:   fingernail polish, spar varnish (both tumble off in flakes), silicon seal, epoxy glue (both too hard to remove plus the epoxy settles into pinprick sized holes) super glue tumbles right off...that left me with Gorilla glue.  The quicker drying white Gorilla glue in a small bottles goes on easily, it's expansion covers the embossing well, and it (so far) removes easily with an acetone soak.  Apply neatly because the area covered will not be worn down during an extended tumble and may be noticeable after polishing.  Not sure if the Gorilla glue will work on IPs...that's one trial I'm not ready to do yet!

 Looking good!

 Barbara


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## donalddarneille (Apr 20, 2010)

Thanks surfaceone, I was actually out of town for a few days in the middle of the cycle, so I turned it off until I got back and this is the results of about three days total in the tumbler. The embossing has a nice strong strike, so that little time has had no noticable effect.

 Hey Barbara, I know it is ultimately up to me how far I want to take this bottle, I just always find it interesting to hear others opinions about cleaning. Eventualy this one will find it's way back to the tumbler, I have a person interested in it who would like the casewear to be cleaned up a little more, after they purchase it. Never thought of using Gorilla Glue, but it does make sense that it would work well. Good to know it can easily be soaked off!

 Here's a couple daylight photos.


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## donalddarneille (Apr 20, 2010)

This shot shows the casewear pretty well.


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## Lordbud (Apr 20, 2010)

If I had found/dug that bottle I would have left it as is/as was. It looks nice and clean 'cept for the lip area. My rule is unless I'm investing in a bottle to sell later and tumble now, I would never clean a bottle. And I won't do that again.


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## donalddarneille (Apr 21, 2010)

Yeah, the lip is pretty rough on this one! But since I obtained (practically was given to me!) this bottle soley for the purpose of practicing my tumbling skills, I am quite happy with the results. If the person I'm passing this bottle on to wants, I'll work on the lip treatment. I enjoy the process of tumbling and love the results, and will continue to tumble bottles I find and purchase in the future. I've always found it easier to sell a well tumbled bottle, as opposed to selling the same bottle when it is sick.

 I saw another bottle like this one in the January 18th, 2010 American Bottle Auction, lot 6. My example is in no where near as good of condition as the one that sold, so why not do what you can to make what you have into the best it can be?


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## Lordbud (Apr 21, 2010)

> My example is in no where near as good of condition as the one that sold, so why not do what you can to make what you have into the best it can be?


 
 I agree. If you have a buyer, or you are learning and perfecting the cleaning/tumbling process that makes sense. Most bottle collectors prefer a gleaming, shiny example of a bottle they want for their collection. 

 I'm amazed at how many folks these days are tumbling bottles compared to say 25 or 30 years ago where bottles were routinely mailed to the few Pro bottle cleaners there were back then. 

 Jim in South San Francisco had an end-over-end set up specifically to clean the numerous rectangular or square bottles without rounding off the corners, and made breakage far less likely. His machine looked like the inside of a four cylinder engine with giant pistons. The tumbling action and polish went from the lip to the base and back again, rather than around in a cylinder.

 Very interesting guy he was, who also had lots of bottles for sale. He always mentioned any thing he'd done to clean a bottle or polish out a chip. I have a pumpkin-seed flask that he completely removed a chip from the base of, and if he hadn't told me I'd never suspect it ever had any damage. He left it looking like a slight flaw in the manufacturing process.


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## crabbergirl (Apr 21, 2010)

I agree about the cleaning. Most of my finds come from river bottom and are impacted with mud and sand. I have even dug them from the bases of trees with roots growing in the bottles and left them like that. I think some of the remains add to the overall charatcer and story of the bottle.  On the other hand when I find a pristine bottle  I am so impressed. There is a beauty that comes from a clean bottle, but I seem to lean toward the not to perfect look for the sake of antiquity.


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