One of my hobbies is building impossible bottles. I like building things, and I like puzzles that make you think. Several years ago I discovered these crazy bottles, which are mind-bendingly interesting objects. I have never seen one in person, but I started building them myself anyway. (Click the photos for big versions).
This one has a pack of cards with a bolt through it, clipped with a large bulldog clip, and hanging from the golf ball at the top.
That’s a monkey fist knot at the top. The pack of cards is hanging freely.
The next one is the most difficult one I’ve constructed. The hole at the top is only 23mm wide (the size of my thumb). The pack of cards is 66mm wide.
The nail scissors are padlocked together; the padlock keys are also locked onto the padlock.
I threw in a slinky for good measure. 
The deck of cards contains every card in order by suit. The deck is bolted through with a 45mm long stainless steel bolt.
The next bottle involves golf balls and is probably the most difficult to figure out.
The top two golf balls are able to move a little on either side of the neck of the bottle. They are bolted together; the nut is on the inside of the bottle.
I should have made it with nicer golf balls though!
This one is just what it looks like: a Rubik’s Cube in a 900 ml Pam’s jam jar. I think I got the cube for 50 cents at the Salvation Army store (it was missing a few stickers).
The Rubik’s Cube measures 78 mm diagonally across the top. The neck of the jar is 61 mm across. The cube only has about 2 mm clearance inside the body of the jar. This one was very fiddly!
I quite like this next one. It was quite straightforward to do but the colours and the neat triangular bottle appeal to me.
All the chalk is in the box and unbroken.
I have some pretty ambitious ideas for new things to put in bottles, and other ‘impossible’ objects to construct. Watch this space.
How is it done?
There is no ‘trick’ to these bottles. The bottles are ordinary glass bottles I bought from Salvation Army stores. They have not been cut, drilled or otherwise broken in any way. The items are ordinary, real objects which I purchased in stores. Everything was placed into the bottles through the neck.
“Impossible” bottles are perfectly real. All you have to do is figure how it is done – and then get to work doing it yourself. Remember: Impossible is just a word …
“Ah, Westminster Abbey! Edward the Confessor himself could not have done better! Now to set the clock to Greenwich mean time.”
Left by BK Drinkwater on March 7th, 2009