# Show us your Birdswings!



## downeastdigger (Dec 2, 2007)

As I have no new dug stuff to show you guys, I have resorted to posting pictures of past digs.  How sad.  Do you guys have any of these?  I've heard them called 'birdswings',  usually on the inside of the bottle is where they are found.  This bottle was the first pontiled bottle I ever dug out of a privy ( as apposed to a dump).  It has a birdswing on the neck, where a drip of glass dripped off the lip when it was made, and made a little "bridge".  I'm fascinated that it made it out of the glass house without this fragile thread of glass breaking, never mind that it was filled and sold and used, then discarded, then dug by me, and I have managed to not accidently break it off all these years.  Anyways, I'd be interested to see any of your birdswings, especially if you have any 'outside ' ones.
 Bram


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## downeastdigger (Dec 2, 2007)

It is a fairly large sided unembossed med, about 7" tall


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## downeastdigger (Dec 3, 2007)

Nice birdswing Lobey, thanks for posting it!  You hardly ever see them.  Did you dig that ink?


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## tigue710 (Dec 3, 2007)

here is a nice little pontil utility I picked up off of e-bay last year,  love this one!

 It's amazing that your outside bird swing survived!  I've seen a few bottles with mold blow outs or wings on them, some extending almost a quarter inch from the bottle, I always ponder how the did not break  when buried...


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## tigue710 (Dec 4, 2007)

Thanks Lobey, those two are out of 16, but it is the camera really...  I need a new one as this one is messed up but I cant find one that gets as good of a close up as this camera does.  It is a Cannon powershot A300, 3.2 mega pixel.  The lens' for these were made by the same people who made the Hubble lens (that a good thing, really!), but cannon no longer has them make their lens'.  When I first got this camera I coulda of taking the shot with one try and you woulda seen every little bubble in it....  it's getting blurry now a days.  I do have an Olympia 5 mega pixils, but it doesn't come close to this one messed up!


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## bigghouse (Dec 4, 2007)

wow those r really cool! howed they get on their?

 anna


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## GuntherHess (Dec 4, 2007)

Here is my bird swing. an odd thing to ask to see in a bottles forum?


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## cowseatmaize (Dec 4, 2007)

Here's one, can ya see it? It's that thing at the shoulder that looks like glare but isn't.


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## downeastdigger (Dec 4, 2007)

Hi Anna,  they got there from when the bottle was blown, and the glass was still liquid, and a string of glass dripped away from the bottle and somehow stayed solid when it cooled.  Kind of like how pizza cheese can be real stringy and a thread of cheese will stick to the plate and stretch out when you take a bite.


> ORIGINAL:  bigghouse
> 
> wow those r really cool! howed they get on their?
> 
> anna


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## downeastdigger (Dec 4, 2007)

Hey Cowseatmaize  thanks for the post, yes they are hard to photograph on the inside, mine was easy cause it was on the outside.  Do you want to sell or trade that bottle?  I'd like to start a collection of birdswings


> ORIGINAL:  cowseatmaize
> 
> Here's one, can ya see it? It's that thing at the shoulder that looks like glare but isn't.


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## downeastdigger (Dec 4, 2007)

HI Tigue , nice job on the photo of the birdswing on the inside!  Thats a cool one, I've never seen one like that.  Would ;you sell it or trade it?  I'd love to have a birdswing collection.  One of my favorite bottle collections I've ever seen was a few years ago, where a guy had bottles that had been wrapped in tree roots.  He had carefully sawed the tree root, saving the bottle.  So he had them lined out on a table, just 3 or 4 of them,  and each one had a THICK root, like 4 or 5 " thick, completely grown around the bottle.  I thought it was cool because there is no way you could reproduce it or make a fake one.   And in order to be made, it requires 50+ years, or however old that 4" root was.  Anyone ever see one of these?  Or are you saying "what the hell is Bram talking about?"


> ORIGINAL:  tigue710
> 
> here is a nice little pontil utility I picked up off of e-bay last year,Â  love this one!
> 
> It's amazing that your outside bird swing survived!Â  I've seen a few bottles with mold blow outs or wings on them, some extending almost a quarter inch from the bottle, I always ponder how the did not breakÂ  when buried...


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## downeastdigger (Dec 4, 2007)

OOPs,  sorry didnt mean to reproduce all those pics again


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## tigue710 (Dec 4, 2007)

This is one of my favorite bottles, maybe someday though....  but I dont want to get your hopes up!  I've seen a few root bottles, even dug a warranted flask once myself that had a nice thick root wrapped around it.  I remember someone posting a historical with a root around it, I think it was double eagle?  might have been Rick?  It was very cool...


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## appliedlips (Dec 4, 2007)

Cool topic.I know I have a couple bottles with them around here somewhere,will post when I find them.In the meantime,here is a coffin flask with a large chunk of glass inside( much larger than the neck).I broke the shoulder of the bottle shaking the chunk around like a moron.I wonder how it possibly could have gotten in the bottle and not attached itself to the inside of the glass.Hope to see some more of these oddities.Doug


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## tigue710 (Dec 5, 2007)

dang Doug, that is interesting there...  you sure that isnt a chunk of ice though?


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## appliedlips (Dec 5, 2007)

Thanks Tique,It' not ice but that was my intitial thought until I realized I was digging in 90 degree weather.It is glass and was dug near the factory where it was made.Doug


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## cowseatmaize (Dec 5, 2007)

Sorry Bram, mines one of a few that I have left from my pre-teen digging days. It's the only common I kept do to the swing. Everything else has long since been sold, given or thown away. Desperate times call... but I'm not quite there yet and if I was it would have to sell for a big chunk of change which it isn't worth. If I need a kidney or some other organ I'll let you know. I hope no one ever gets to that point.
 I also have a near outside swing olive cone. It's got a big swoop of sharp glass but never connected to a point on another place.


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## idigjars (Dec 7, 2007)

Sorry it took me so long to post some pics.  I have one Piso with a bird swing, really hard to take the pic so I guess you might have to use your imagination a little?  []             Take care,   Paul


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## idigjars (Dec 7, 2007)

A new beer but this Coor's is for you  []           Paul


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## idigjars (Dec 7, 2007)

another view of the Coors


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## idigjars (Dec 7, 2007)

And a Carter cone ink


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## idigjars (Dec 7, 2007)

Last one, hope you liked them.  Take care              Paul


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## tigue710 (Dec 7, 2007)

Hey Doug, I was just messing with you....  I wonder how it got in there?  Nice stuff everyone, that Coors is pretty cool...


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## Bottleman (Dec 8, 2007)

Here is an Herb Bitters with a birdswing that I once had but I sold it to a â€œbirdswingâ€ collector.


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## Bottleman (Dec 8, 2007)

Another view


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## PhilaBottles (Dec 8, 2007)

put the coors on ebay for a million dollars


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## downeastdigger (Dec 9, 2007)

Wow those are some GREAT ONES .  If anyone is selling any, or knows someone who is, please let me know . Can you imagine if someday I had a collection of 50 birdswing bottles?  That would be a collection that even the big money guys couldn't top     Thanks for taking the time to post the pics!


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## RED Matthews (Mar 27, 2011)

Well all of you,  I just stumbled onto this thread.  I will need to come back to it if I can find it tomorrow, because the glass pulls from internal contacts are not all bird swings.  They are however a swallowing hazard if they break loose and come out in some food or drink.  The ABM bird swings are easily caused by the inversion of the parison form from the blank mold to the final blow mold.  Also on the ABM machines doing press and blow can have a hot tipped plunger pull a spike down inside the parison form that will end up as a spike in the center of the jar being made.  Modern inspection equipment catches all most all of them.  
 Your pictures show some anomalies in  hand blown products.  These can be very interesting to analyze.  These glass pulls were caused when the inside of the product being blown had two points of hot glass touch each other and pull the strands pictured.  
 As for the large piece of glass in the flask - that is a good stump-er.  
 I will try to get back.   RED Matthews


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## peejrey (Mar 27, 2011)

Cool stuff[]
 I'll put up mine tomorow.....


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## Staunton Dan (Mar 28, 2011)

I dug this bottle the other day and it was filled with dirt. When I took a bottle brush to the inside, I broke the birdswing. The effect was 2 birds with long beaks, one right side up and the other upside down. To me they look like hummingbirds. I really like the bottle.


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## JOETHECROW (Mar 28, 2011)

They _do_ look like birds Dan,...I liked that bottle when I first saw it...very cool.


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## JOETHECROW (Mar 28, 2011)

Here's the lone birdswing/ glass droop in my bottles right now,...This slump of glass inside is very thick (over 1/4") and is on the insside of a glueback "Oak Orchard Acid Springs" bottle.


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## JOETHECROW (Mar 28, 2011)

One more.


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## RED Matthews (Mar 28, 2011)

Hi Joe  Bring that one with you when you come over to Corning.  RED Matthews


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## Ye Olde Prospector (Mar 16, 2021)

RED Matthews said:


> Hi Joe  Bring that one with you when you come over to Corning.  RED Matthews


 

Remember Red Mathews ,always enjoyed his posts on the forum. Here is my favorite Birds Wing bottle. Open pontil umbrella ink with a vertical birds wing. Had it lightly tumbled to show it much better. Glad it did not break. 

Cliff


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## buriedtreasuretime (Mar 31, 2021)

Staunton Dan said:


> I dug this bottle the other day and it was filled with dirt. When I took a bottle brush to the inside, I broke the birdswing. The effect was 2 birds with long beaks, one right side up and the other upside down. To me they look like hummingbirds. I really like the bottle.



That is an amazing piece of glass. It is it’s unique charactered personality. How big is this piece and do you think it’s a food bottle like a Horlick’s malted milk or such? Really rustic and crude, I love those traits in a bottle.


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