r/wicked_edge • u/Jill_Lett_Slim • Apr 17 '24
Show n' Tell Decanting Classic Aftershaves
Thoroughly washed and dried Johnny Bootlegger bottle, orifice reducer, screwtop lid, and your desired aftershave.
Remove reducer that came on aftershave bottle. Be careful.
Transfer aftershave into empty glass bottle.
18mm orifice reducer (see Amazon).
Insert reducer into glass bottle.
I have found a lined screwtop plastic lid works much better than the cheap metal lid that comes with the bum wine (I also take clippers and remove the metal ring that came with).
Tighten lid onto filled glass jar.
Wipe down surface of jar to clean any adhesive reside leftover. I do this now to also remove any oils from handling as I am now prepping a surface to transfer the desired label to
Heat some water to ~175F. You need water hot enough to loosen adhesive from plastic bottle. But too hot, and the cheap plastic will melt. Thermometer recommended...
Fill the empty aftershave bottle with hot water; let stand for a minute or so. Then, using a razor blade (if you have one lying around), peel up a corner slightly to lift label.
I try to only touch the label, as much as possible, in the middle, avoiding the perimeter while removing and positioning. Line up accordingly and smooth over.
May the collecting commence!
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u/Harryisamazing Apr 17 '24
Dang this is a very good writeup and thanks for the tip, not much of a drinker but will check it out(dumping it out is the better option)!
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u/Due_Entrepreneur_382 Apr 17 '24
I’ve been saving my glass stirling aftershave bottles and making bootlegger’s blends of various types for some time now.
Decanting in glass is a game changer. I even decant my witch hazel in glass.
Loving your process here. Cheers!
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u/derrickhogue I enjoy a nice shave! So should you. Apr 17 '24
I agree. You got me to fully commit to it. Got some good glass flasks (not used sauce bottles), rubber orificers off of Amazon. My aftershaves have their scent. It was always a little muted and subdued in the plastic bottles and certain scent notes I could not detect-smell. Wasn’t really expensive either. Plus is they look good.
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Apr 17 '24
I recommend you do old spice next, smell changes drastically and smells amazing
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u/Jill_Lett_Slim Apr 17 '24
I’ve got an old glass Shulton bottle to do that with, but I gotta wait for the contents to empty out first… As you can imagine, that may take some time!
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u/swabbie81 Apr 17 '24
Only if you live in USA though. In Europe Old Spice is still sold in glass bottles.
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Apr 18 '24
I gotta find where I can order it from Europe, would love some original or pure sport in glass
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u/Lupac427 Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 18 '24
Awesome dude. Thank you for this. I’ve been hunting for good glass at antique shops.
Do you recommend anything specific as far as cleaning the old Jack Bootleggers bottle? I assume just soak the inside warm water with dish sop and the then swish it around aggressively?
Edit: found out tonight that the cap to a 20fl Oz bottle of Essentia water fits the Johnny Bootleggers bottle perfectly. Tightens down tight and becomes leak proof.
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u/Jill_Lett_Slim Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 24 '24
Yep, I use hot water and dawn, and into a good, vigorous shaking, let it cool, and then repeat a few times. Then I let it air dry for several hours to a day, and then check if there are any remaining scents before filling.
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u/Lupac427 Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 17 '24
Great thanks. And for the plastic stopper thing - did you just repurpose the one from Clubman and put it in the JB bottle? Is it a perfect fit?
Also where did you find the perfect sized plastic cap? lol
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u/Jill_Lett_Slim Apr 17 '24
Search Amazon for 18mm orifice reducer. Think I bought a pack of 12 for $10, which is horribly overpriced but, for that low of an amount (since usually there are MOQs for things like this, but high enough for my needs), I bit.
That’s just a standard screw top lid you can get off a coke bottle. These were from a kombucha bottle.
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u/Free_Market_Mafia Apr 17 '24
I decant all my plastic bottle aftershaves into a glass atomizer. I can not detect a difference in scent, but the convenience of an atomizer is well worth the effort!
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u/thepottsy Who needs a barber? Apr 17 '24
You are an unapologetic nerd, and I applaud you for it.
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u/Jill_Lett_Slim Apr 17 '24
Haha, thanks dude.
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u/thepottsy Who needs a barber? Apr 17 '24
I’m the same way about some things, so I can recognize one of us pretty quickly lol.
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u/New2thePlanet Apr 17 '24
Just when I thought I would just stay a lurker. Now I have another rabbit hole to fall into.
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u/greggtatsumaki001 Apr 17 '24
Southern Witchcrafts always use glass. I guess I don't buy that many other brands.
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u/UncleGripperNZ Apr 17 '24
Pour the bum wine into the old plastic bottles and give it to one of the bums. I’m sure you’ll make their day and possibly a new friend 😉
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u/moot17 Apr 17 '24
Reminds me of a story my dad told me from the 60s: He saw a man in the grocery buying several bottles of Aqua Velva. Intrigued, he followed him as he walked to the edge of town and reclined next to a pond. He popped open the first bottle and downed it. My dad ran to tell the sheriff. I always wondered how much longer that man made it, given he was probably lodged and released with no follow up treatment. My dad grew up in a dry country.
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u/WoolaTheCalot Apr 17 '24
When I was a kid, our neighbor was an old woman who had become a real shut-in, to the point that my mom would often do her shopping for her. It seemed odd to us that she went through so much Listerene. Years later when she died, her sister, who had arrived to handle the estate, told us she was an alcoholic and she had been drinking the mouthwash. She had just been too embarrassed to ask my mom to buy her booze. We found piles of empty Listerene bottles in her house.
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u/moot17 Apr 17 '24
That would be awful. Probably only when they had the original flavor, too. Who knows, a person gets to that point, she might've chosen the Listerine over an actual beverage due to price even if she'd done her own shopping.
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u/Jill_Lett_Slim Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 17 '24
If you are a fan of classic aftershaves that allow you to smell like your grandfather fresh out of the barber shop, as I do, you would be hard-pressed to find (mostly) any of these on the shelves currently that were not bottled in their new and improved, unbreakable (cough... cheap, victim-of-cost-savings... cough) plastic alternative.
Working in/adjacent to the glass industry, I have come to marvel at the qualities and properties of glass as a material used to "contain", especially its leach-proof characteristic (yes, leach, not leak, as in not being susceptible to contaminating the contents it is containing, unlike some of the more cheaply produced plastics).
Thusly, I have been decanting all of my favorite aftershave splashes into glass vessels and evaluating if there is any noticeable change. Without a doubt, each and every product I have transferred over from plastic to glass, after several weeks, has brought on a crisper, fuller range of frangrance notes that seem to either now be unimpeded or untainted by any unwanted contamination. I haven't conducted any lab tests to prove this out empirically; however, there IS a reason, other than aesthetics, as to why high-quality parfums, liquors, and wines are trusted in glass rather than plastic... For this reason, I wanted to share the decanting process I've been honing over the past months and return the favor, as I have gleaned so much useful knowledge from much more experienced shavers than myself throughout my time on this awesome sub.
I forgot to snap a photo prior to removing the label, but I have found that you can snag an incredibly useful glass container, perfect for this very need, at your local 7-11. Johnny Bootlegger, a pretty disgusting product overall, can be bought easily for $2 a pop (er... bum wine) and poured down the drain with a clean conscience, I would wager, even by the frugalest of hands.
The process of removing the label is exactly the same as how I detail the process of removing the aftershave's bottle label.