# Bottle with internal threaded stopper



## Mihai (May 20, 2006)

Hi everybody,

 Today I was walking my dog in a park and I found a bottle, as the title says, complete with an internal stopper. It was half out of the ground, in an area with some trees and bushes. I saw many shards around and some recent bottles but this is the only one that could be older.

 What I would like to ask is this: until when were this kind of bottles produced? There is no doubt that this is a machine made bottle, but the rest of bottles were quite recent, maybe 80's, and this doesn't match. 

 To make things even harder to date, next to this bottle was a neck from a bottle with internal thread but with tooled lip. I would like to try my luck and to move the dirt a bit, but this place is metres away from a Police Headquarters and I bet they wouldn't like to tunnel under their fence.

 Thank you!


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## Mihai (May 20, 2006)

And this is the neck I was telling about.


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## capsoda (May 20, 2006)

Hey Mihai, Both tops look almost identical. Can you tell what the stopper is made of?


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

At a closer look I can see the horizontal marks on the broken one. The camera can't take better close-ups, but I'll try again. Oh, and the broken one is dark green with more bubbles then glass and the other is amber.

 The stopper is made from the same hard rubber or composite stuff I found before.


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## cowseatmaize (May 21, 2006)

> There is no doubt that this is a machine made bottle, but the rest of bottles were quite recent


 Hey, are you saying the top bottle is ABM internal thread. I would think it would have to be hand tooled. I'm confused about the question.
 If your just asking how some 1900 bottles could be mixed with 1980's stuff there are possibilities, like the whole tip was just a big barn cleanout of 80 years of stuff or the later was tossed on top. Maybe some old stuff was thown on top of a later dump. If it was a filled area the top newer layer would be at the bottom. As a foundation or such was dug down the older would end up on top. Maybe it was a previous dig and the older bottles were taken and they left the new stuff... but missed one. Archeology is cool stuff.


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

At the first bottle the seam goes right to the top but at the broken neck I can't see any seam, the lip is uneven and the glass is full of bubbles. The tool marks are clear at the shard but not existent at the complete one.

 In the area I found the bottle there is an alley, cut through the hill, that looks recent and I think the builders took the old layers and put on top of new ones. And I have another theory. In this place there are two lakes and a river, used for fishing and boat activities and I found already a spot where maintenance throw the mud dragged from water, full of recent bottles. Maybe the location of the bottle found yesterday is the old place for dumping mud, which can explain the variety of ages.

 What I ask is how old, or new, can be an ABM internal threaded bottle. Some US sources give a span of between 1880 and 1920, but I don't know for sure how long they were ysed un UK. For example in India codd bottles were used until 1970 I think, when they were banned. Dunno y!


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## cowseatmaize (May 21, 2006)

Huh? You got me. I can't think of a way for a machine to make an IT in a single stage. It seems like the same as trying to get embossing on the inside of a bottle, I just can't picture how. If a sepeate stage while the glass was still hot enough maybe. There were devices made back around 1850 but the weren't really automatic or full height that I know of. The neck was still finished by hand. Even a full height threaded Mason was cut off and ground down by hand.
 I hope someone has an answer for you (and me).


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

My knowledge about bottle making is lower then most of the guys on this forum, I cannot sustain a contradictory discusion with any of you, and most of all I don't want to. I still have a lot to learn from this forum. I will post as many and as clear pictures I'm able to and I will leave them to do the talking for me.


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

Please see the seam going all the way on the lip.


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

And another ungle for the top.


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## cowseatmaize (May 21, 2006)

> I still have a lot to learn from this forum.


 We all do, There are many cases where the method is only known by the people who did them. But since they've mostly passed away we can only figure from what's been documented or speculate ourselves. 
 I was trying to be argumentitive in any way.
 As for the lip I do see the seams. Now I'll speculate and hope someone can back me or prove me wrong. I'd be just as happy with either.
 I does look like a seam but I'd guess it was formed in a mold by clamping 2 halves around a matching thread, kind of like pressed glass. Then cutting off and applying it. This is only because my brain still can't think of a way for it to be a fully a automatic single stage process.
 I can think of a way to automate it in 2 stages or by a seprate machine but I don't know if it was ever done that way. It would be similar to above but done by a machine.
  I would guess that such a machine would have been made a while after the Owens, perhaps around 1912.
 Maybe Roger will check in. He's from where most of those were made and may have researched it. grimdigger1 and others may know too, I don't though.


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

If I would be a 1912 bottle maker who wants to adapt an ABM to making internal thread I would fix a metal bit, like a normal screw bit used for drilling holes but with a bigger length, which can be pull out once the glass settled. 

 Lucky guys I wasn't around at that time. I might have spoiled the bottle making industry forever.


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## Ye Olde Prospector (May 21, 2006)

Hi Mihai and Eric,

 Here is a bottle with internal threads and stopper I dug a while back. It is 3 in. tall, all clear glass. Guessing it was a chemical bottle of some type. Probably dates from the 1920's. Saved it only because thought it was a different type closure. Not sure if it was made in US or Foreign.

 Cliff


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## Ye Olde Prospector (May 21, 2006)

It has "PAT"D/ FEB 14 1922" embossed on the neck portion in very small print. You can see the internal threads.There is also a "3" embossed on the bottom.


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## Ye Olde Prospector (May 21, 2006)

The stopper was molded separately. I am guessing that it might have had a rubber "O" ring to seal the bottle better. Hope this if helps.

 Cliff


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

My bottle has on bottom written "124" I think, a "G" in the centre and an "I" or "1" just below.


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## capsoda (May 21, 2006)

The internal thread stopper was invented in America by S.A. Whitney, Glasbobough, N.J., of the Whitney Glass Co. and was patented in 1861. The internal stopper caught on in England but wasn't used in the US much.

 Your bottle was made on a semi automatic bottle machine and the top was finished before the bottle was actually blown. The internal stopper was being pushed aside by easyer to manufacture, cheeper and easyer to use stoppers by the late 1800s and in some forms is still being used today.

 Your bottle dates between 1881 and the very early 1900s. 1913 at the latest.


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## Mihai (May 21, 2006)

And here you all have another chapter from the best-seller "The Da Capsoda Code". This forum will simply implode without this mountain of knowledge. No innuendos!

 Thank you for your answer, Warren.


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## ronvae2 (May 23, 2006)

> I does look like a seam but I'd guess it was formed in a mold by clamping 2 halves around a matching thread, kind of like pressed glass. Then cutting off and applying it. This is only because my brain still can't think of a way for it to be a fully a automatic single stage process.





> ORIGINAL: cowseatmaize
> I'm no expert at all, but I agree with this.  I think that seam, though it is in the right place to mean machine-made, somehow came from a hand-made process.  Those lips resemble bottles I have from 1880-1910-ish (that I've gotten dated by people who know).


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