Are you always looking for things to put in your man cave? Maybe you have a bar at home with neon signs and similar decorator objects? If that’s the case you might already know how hard it can be to find appropriate things, and how expensive found items can be, so it could take a long time to arrange the bar or man cave just how you want it. On your way there, make some beer bottle oil lamps, and you can create a man-type ambiance for the room or area, without creating a feminine feel. You know you have beer bottles so, instead of throwing them away, put them to good use. Don’t drink beer? Try a grape soda, orange soda, or other glass bottle.
Most any small, glass bottle with a metal lid will work to craft a unique oil lamp for your home. Carefully remove the lid so that you don’t bend it severely. Start with a clean, dry bottle. The hardest part of making the lamp is poking a hole in the bottle cap. Although using a drill is the easiest way to make the hole you can also do it by driving a screw driver, ice pick, or other implement, into the lid.
Oil lamp wicks are often sold where you buy the lamps but, if you have no wick, you can make your own. Lay a tube sock out on a table and cut down one side so that you can lay the sock flat on the table. Cut a long strip from the sock and use it for the wick. The wick should be as tall as the bottle, with several extra inches, ideally.
You can use regular lamp oil in the beer bottle lamp, if you want, or you can use cooking oil. Olive oil works great as a replacement for lamp oil. Place the wick in the beer bottle so that it reaches the bottom and slightly curls. Feed the other end of the wick into the underside of the cap, and pull it out the other side, leaving a couple of inches sticking up above the cap. If you use ordinary lamp oil, the yellow kind works well to give the bottle a look that emulates beer, when used in a clear beer bottle.
Hold the cap of the beer bottle aside as you fill the bottle with the olive oil. Then, tap the cap back in place on the bottle. Let it sit overnight and then just light the wick as you would with any other oil lamp. The beer bottle – or soda bottle – oil lamp is unusual, easy to make, and really cool.
Beer Bottle Oil Lamp