Acoustic and Electric Custom-made Glass and Bottleneck Guitar Slides

Here in the heart of the U.K.'s glassworking & glass manufacturing area are our workshops, based in the original 150 year-old Royal Doulton glass factory - this is where the 'magic' is created by our team! Please scroll down to see our 'Artisans' at Work'...

Our shop frontage - we share these workshops with 'Redhouse Glasscrafts' - our parent company & the U.K.'s #1 glass repair and restoration specialists.

Birds-eye view from the first-floor gallery overlooking the workbenches & ground floor.

This first-floor is our main stock holding area where we keep our collection of empty bottles & crystal tubes....

First-cut; each bottle and Crystal tube is cut using a variety of water-fed diamond cutting wheels...Ian here begins the initial 'cut' to create a 'Blue Diamond' piece.

First shaping of the 'cut-profiles' using our water-fed linishing belt equipment - these machines have been specially-modified for us from original metal-working sanders!

Richard adds the first shaping phase of the inner chamfers on the slo-rotating diamond wheels - there'll be two more operations on this part of the process to complete!

The 'Polper Wheel' - one of the pieces of our equipment that just isn't available anymore....a traditional machine (originally powered by foot-treddle's) which is invaluable to us - we have great experience in fixing it whenever it breaks down!

Using various Cerium Oxide pastes, this machine 'second-polishes' the shaped bottlenecks & crystal tubes, de-seaming it in the same process....

Two brush-wheels complete the last (third) stage of final-polishing the outside of our bottlenecks & crystal tubes using fine-grade Cerium Oxide pastes....Richard at the helm.

The final-stages of the creation....wax-shaping & polishing the inner chamfers using a selection of fine-grade sanding belts to achieve a perfectly smooth curved inside edge - if any unsmoothed edges are found on final inspection they're re-polished by hand using oil-stone handfiles!

...and as we completed this photo-shoot, a customer called in to try out a few slides. He left two hours later a very happy fellow!

.....thanks for joining us on our workshop tour - most of the equipment you see here are custom-made pieces, or impossible to obtain now due to the downturn in glass manufacturing across the globe...i'm pleased to say that we do have spare parts to keep the wheels turning!

We are now able to take visitors who are interested in how our glass bottlenecks & slides are created on a tour of our workshop (maximum 4 people per group), so if you'd like to create your own bottleneck from a bottle you have - or choose a piece from our vast glass & bottle stocks - please contact us & we'll be happy to arrange your visit!

Ian, Richard & Brett - the team in 2009.