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tigue710

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Hey, really enjoyed the piece about dating machine made bottles. (I've enjoyed you whole site) Being pretty well versed in bottle language a lot of the site is a good refresher for me but I've not seen any work in detail put together about machine made bottle before. There is so much to learn here which can very helpful to a digger in determining age of a dump they are digging, or a particular use of an area of the dump at what time. For instance today I dug a hand blown Carters master ink. Many of the bottles where it had been dug were machine made but because I found a few blown bottles I figured the area is 1905 or around that time and there would be a good chance of hitting a nice 1890's layer. But back to the ink which is clear, but not purple. It is straw. Being a small dumping area with in a large dump I now know that it was used after 1912 in this area, and maybe a little too far away from the much older stuff I'm digging elsewhere in the dump. Also I found the evolution of the bottle machine very interesting and loved the video of the Owens bottle machine! Thanks, Matt
 

jfcutter

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You are most welcome Matt!

Your comments are quite appreciated as I've actually had some comments that the machine-made bottle coverage is not elaborate or "strong" enough compared to mouth-blown (this from some archaeologists). Of course, what else out there does even what the Historic Bottle Website (HBW) does in regards to machine-made dating & information? Nothing, to my knowledge...

As far as I know, the Historic Bottle Website is the only reference source - book or website - that does what it does or even close. There is only one book to my knowledge that was even close - the 1980s Parks Canada Glass Glossary by Jones & Sullivan (archaeologists). However, it is too general to my mind and the authors didn't stick out there neck at all with high probability date ranges for the various manufacturing attributes which limits the books utility for real dating estimates. I stick my neck out some, but it is based on a LOT of observations of 10s of thousands of bottles over 40 years...

The point of doing the HBW was to provide the tool that I wished I had many decades back in regards to the dating and typing (i.e., what a bottle was likely used for). But of course, I had to look at bottles for a long, long time to come up with what is found on the HBW.

I also just love those film clips - the amazing Owens machine (with Michael Owens in it!) and mouth-blowing dudes - that a senior engineer at Owens-Illinois provded for me (great guy). They are simply fantastic historical clips...period.

As a side note, the engineer also sent me a clip of a more recent "Individual Section" machine in operation producing 600 bottles per minute! That is as fast (or faster) than an M-16 on full auto and is a marvel to see. Unfortunately, he said that it contained "proprietary information" and I could not post it on the website....alas. Maybe someday.

Thanks again Matt and stay tuned for further additions to the website...including some enhancing of the machine-made sections as time goes on. I retire in a couple months but will be continuing to enhance and expand the HBW forever...

Bill
 

tigue710

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dont get me started on archaeologists! I've found the section very useful and is good to see you went ahead broke the boundary. Not to mention the rising interest in many machine made bottles. I've enjoyed the site all together and I'm very glad it is here. I'll keep checking back as always, Thanks again, Matt
 

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