Salt and Pepper Grinders from Baby Bottles

As promised, here is the rest of the project to make Salt and Pepper Grinders.  Last blog gave instructions for how to remove the paint.

Supplies:
plastic baby bottles (shower favors – Hobby Lobby)
“salt” – Wilton Cookie Sticks (looks better) or white acrylic paint (less work)
“pepper” – black acrylic paint
silver flat sequins (party confetti)
tiny silver beads, I used cylindrical 15/0 beads (“delica”)
larger silver seed bead – these need to be a little bigger than the delicas
upholstery type staples – I used 5/16” light duty so they would fit inside the small beads
black seed beads for grinder knob
GS Hypo Cement (doesn’t frost glass beads)
Clear nail polish or Pledge Floor Care “finish”

Tools:
Tiny pliers (helps to bend and hold staples while glue dries)
Flush cut wire cutters (to cut off nipples)
Regular wire cutters (to cut staples)
Sandpaper (220 grit)
Pin Vise and wire drill bit sized for the staple

1. Remove the paint and clip off the nipple with flush cut wire cutters.  Sand the top flat or you won’t be able to glue on the silver disk.  After sanding flat, drill a hole in the top (center) using a wire drill bit big enough to hold the size of your staple.
2. If the sanding leaves areas that are frosted you can coat the areas with clear nail polish or the Pledge floor finish.
 


3. For salt, I used cut lengths of cookie sticks.  (You could also just paint the inside with white paint.)  Cookie sticks are actually very tightly rolled paper but you can peel off some if they are too thick for your bottles.  To do this, just soak a stick in water for JUST A MINUTE or so.  Scrape along the seam with your fingernail to loosen the paper and start un-peeling it.  I cut these on my mini table saw (since I needed 100) but you can use a razor saw and miter box.  Glue these inside the bottles and let dry before you try to glue in the tops.



4. For pepper I ended up just painting the inside with black paint (took 2 coats).
5. Use GS Hypo Cement (or other non-fogging bead glue) for all gluing of grinder tops.
6. Pepper Grinder – Bend the staple in the center using small needle-nose pliers to a stair step shape.  Cut the staple just off center as shown in the photo (notice one side is a little longer – the longer piece is used for the pepper grinder). 
   
7. Glue on the beads as shown in the photo below.  The black bead is used as the grinder knob.  Cut off extra staple extending past the black bead. 
   
8. Salt Grinder top – Glue silver beads on the smaller piece of the cut staple, smaller one below the larger as in the photo above.  Cut off the extra bend in the wire above the silver bead.
9. Poke a hole in the silver disk.  Glue the silver disk on the top of the bottle. Glue the grinder tops into the hole. 
10. Paint the inside of the pepper shaker with 2 coats of black paint.  You can't tell from these photos but the bottom of the bottles are open so this can be done after gluing the grinders on, if desired.
11. That's it!  Hope you like this mini-project.  Next time I will start on the rest of the kitchen.

Salt and Pepper and Removing Paint

 

Here is a project that will take a couple of blogs to finish.  I will begin with how to remove paint from plastic baby bottles (party favors).  Then in the next blog I will tell how to make the grinders.

I thought these baby bottles from Hobby Lobby looked just like salt and pepper grinders.  Problem was the pink paint!  I had to make 100 sets for an event (that’s 200 total!) so I needed a way to remove the paint.

I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to research paint removal for just one pair but since I had to make so many it was worth the time.  I am documenting what I learned in hopes of saving someone else the research time.

I should start by saying that there are many different kinds of plastic and many different kinds of paint.  I don’t know what kind of paint they use on these favors but it must be some kind of spray enamel.  It is very hard to remove.  I wanted the bottles to be crystal clear.

My goal was to find something that would take the paint off without fogging or etching the plastic.  Even though I am a Chemist by training, I mostly relied on trial and error (not being familiar with the paint industry).  I read lots of blogs on car modeling, plane modeling, etc. and tried many products.  You can see from the photos all the things I tried:

Some things frosted the plastic.  Other things either didn’t dissolve the paint or took too long (meaning I gave up not wanting to wait more than a full day to see if it worked).  Here is a summary of what I tried.

These products did nothing even after soaking:

• Simple Green (full strength)
• Paint Thinner (kind of worked but would have to be scraped)
• Alcohol (70% Isopropyl)
• Testors Brush Cleaner

These products etched the plastic:

• Zip Strip paint remover (it DID remove paint too)
• Nail Polish Remover (non-acetone)
• Nail Polish Remover (acetone) -
• Model Master “Acryl” Dried Paint Solvent

Winners! These both worked removing paint with no fogging but required soaking overnight:

• Brake Fluid
• Easy Off Oven Cleaner (requires some scraping) 

A couple of notes:

1. All of these are solvents and require use of gloves (and maybe goggles!) and should be used only in well ventilated areas (like the garage with door open).
2. Since I was doing this for 200 bottles, I did it in batches.  I put 20 or 30 into a plastic bag and set the bag down into a disposable drink cup.  I poured the brake fluid into the bag and sealed it up and let it soak overnight.  It was kind of messy. 
3. The next day I drained off the used fluid (the pink-ish stuff in the baggie in the photo above).  Then I used paper towels to wipe off the fluid.  There was a pink film still on them so I gave them another quick rinse in clean fluid and swabbed the pink out of the inside of the bottles with a Q-tip.
4. Disposal - I was left with the problem of what to do with the used brake fluid.  It can’t be poured down the drain.  I drained it off the bottles after they soaked and poured it all back into a plastic container.  Thanks to O’Reilly Auto Parts I was able to take the used solvent back to the store and they disposed of it.  You might have to ask around.  One other auto parts store I bought some from would not accept it.
5. It takes a little scrubbing to remove all bits of the paint.  I had to sand the center tops of some of the bottles after clipping off the nipples. 
6. There is one more trick I learned to solve the problem of fogged or scratched plastic.   Some of the car modelers coat the fogged plastic with Pledge Floor Care (Wal Mart) (I think this used to be called “Future” floor polish some years ago).  This helped where the tops were sanded to make them clearer.  Car modelers use it for scratched windshields. (you see I have marked my bottle "Minis" because I am likely to forget why I bought it and might throw it out!!)

 That’s all for this blog.  Hope this was helpful to someone.  I know I am indebted to all those car and boat modelers who took the time to blog about their paint removal problems!  Next time how to make the grinders!