Iron Pontil ?

[NewbieBottler]

Hi! Does an iron pontil have to have oxide
residue or is a blue tinged area surrounding
the pontil scar enough of a clue? Thanks ! []

 

[GuntherHess]

An iron pontil mark is usually about from the size of a quarter up to as big as the whole base of the bottle.
It wont be a rough scar like a tubular or glass chip pontil. It normally has a brown/reddish/grey/black residue over it. If the residue has erroded off it can be hard to tell that the bottle was pontilled other than indicated by its style.

 

[capsoda]

Matt is right. You really have to handle alot of bottles to be any good at IDing them.

You would have to list it as posibably pontiled and let the buyers decide if they want it or not.

 

[NewbieBottler]

Hi Warren.......This bottle I'm wondering about is definitely pontiled but
I wanted to confirm that the blue tinge would indicate that iron was
involved in the pontil process. The bottle is very old & crude and has a high
kick up with three raised sharp areas that have some residue or sand
pieces on their surfaces. The blue area covers more than half of the
kickup. What are your thoughts on this being an iron pontil? Thanks!
[]

 

[capsoda]

There are only two kinds of pontil rods. One is a glass tube or rarely a glass rod the other is an iron pontil rod.

All the other names you see or hear about have to do with release agents such as powdered glass, fine sand, finely powdered graphite and a few others.

If no release agent was used there was usually but not always an iron residue { black, red or gray}, or part of the glass was actually pulled away leaving craters.

An improved pontil is an iron pontil. The iron pontil was an improvement over the glass pontil because it was not consumable and left a smoother base. There were some modifications to the iron pontil such as hatching {groves cut across the face of the pontil rod}, cross hatching { a tic tac toe type pattern}, and the ever famous dimple that left a raised bump in the center. Not all bottles with a dimple in the center of the bottom are pontiled.

There is still alot more I could tell you but it takes alot of time, study and handling of bottles to learn to identify all the different kinds of pontil marks. Then a new one pops up.

 

[welddigger]

hey capsoda could you please look at the post that states is this pontil old or newer and tell me what you think , thanks much

 

[capsoda]

Yeap, I did.[]