Storage of ceramic caps of beer
bottles
Over the years I
tried differnt ways of storing ceramic beer bottle caps and saw
other solutions from fellow collectors. The subsequent examples
are intended as suggestions to other collectors. Of course I'm
alwas interested in further ideas how a ceramic bottle caps
collection could be stored or displayed.
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Fig. 1 
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Fig. 2 |
My collection of
ceramic bottle caps is stored in an old wooden architeict's
cabinent (Fig. 1). The cabinent contains 24 very flat drawers
(inside hight about 2.5 cm), so that there fit manny ceramic caps
in a very small space. Inside the drawers I put inserts made from
a special type of foamed polystyrene. Into these inserts I punched
manny small holes, each of which accomodates exactly the lower tip
of a ceramic cap (Fig. 2). This way 360 ceramic caps fit into one
drawer resulting space for a total of 8640 ceramic cap. However
this cabinet is only 100 cm high, 75 cm wide and 65 cm deep.
Selection of the right type of material for the inserts is
important. The left hand panel above (Fig. 2) shows different
materials I tested for these inserts.
- Regular foamed polystyrene (white, top of Fig. 2) is not
very well suited, as it is difficult to punch out holes and as
the material tends to release manny small polystyrene
particles.
- Special foamed polystyrene (Fig. 2 middle, light green),
which is sold in do-it-yourself stores as impact sound
insulation to be placed below laminate.
- Finally I tested a sponge-like material which normally is
used to fix flowers in flower arrangements (Fig. 2, lower
right-hand side, olive-green). Thes material is suitable to
easy punch holes into it and it also easily adjustes to the
exact shape of cermaic bottle caps. Unfortunately this
material is not very durable and in addition releases a
powdery unpleasant dust.
In summary I used and recommend the impact sound insulation
material. |
Fig. 3 
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Double trading
ceramic caps I store, sorted by alphabet, in small cabinets with
manny small drawers, similar to pharmacist's cabinets or cabinets
used in libraries for storage of index cards. The cabinets I use
were bought several years ago at Ikea, but no longer are solde by
them (Fig. 3). This type of small cabinets can be piled up to form a
lager cabinet.
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Fig. 4  |
Initially I
build special shaped insert / holders for storage of my collection
of ceramic cap (Fig. 4). I used plywood into which I drilled holes
with 22 mm diameter using a specialized driller. At the bottom and
at the top edge of these plates I glued small wooden bars. At the
bottom I glued a board of plywood without holes in order to
stabilize the construction. These frames can easily be stacked
without the risk of damaging the ceramic caps. However building such
frames is quite laborious and I stopped building such frames.
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Fig. 5 
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Fig. 6 |
A
very economic way of storage of ceramic caps is as follows: take
corrugted cardbord, cut crossing incisions into the cardboard using
a cardboard cutter and insert the bottom tips of the ceramic caps
into the incisions of the cardboard. (Fig. 5 and 6).
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Fig. 7 
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Fig. 8
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There
are
numerous further options, how to build from different materials
ceramic bottle caps storing aids. One example is to first
drill into wooden boards holes of the size of the bottom tip of
ceramic caps and subsequently, using a bigger drill, drill at the
same positions holes of the upper diameter of ceramic bottle caps
into the wood. The bigger hole is drilled only about 2/3 deep of the
thickness of the wooden boards (Fig. 7).
A very simple way of storing ceramic bottle caps is the use of
inserts of foamed polystyrene used for packaging of ketchup tubes
(Fig. 8).
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Fig. 9 
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Another idea for
storing ceramic bottle caps and to fix them in an ordered way is the
use of rubber mats with punched out holes. The holes should be a
little smaller than the diameter of the lower tip of the ceramic
caps. The lower tips of the ceramic caps easily can be inserted into
the flexible rubber mats (Fig. 9).
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Fig. 10 
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Fig. 11
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If
you
plan to fix cerami cap on a wooden board in order to hand them onto
a wall for presentaion purposes (Fig 10), you can prepare them as
follows. First drill holes into the board, which holes have a
diameter slightly bigger than the diameter of the tip of the ceramic
caps. Put a small piece of cork into these holes (Fig. 11) and
squeeze in the tips of the ceramic caps. The flexible cork will fix
the ceramic caps and it is not neccessary to glue the ceramic caps.
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Fig. 12 
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In order to
dust-safe present a single ceramic bottle cap you can fix it in
transparent plastic boxes using play dough (Fig. 12).
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Fig. 13  |
Finally ceramic
bottle caps can be fixed on mounting rails normally used for
electricity cables, by use of the rubber seal of the ceramic caps.
Such mounting rails can be purchased in do-it-yourself stores. The
mountig rails can be fixed to wooden boards which can be hang up
onto a wall. This way large numbers of ceramic caps can be presented
on a wall without the need to glue the ceramic caps to the wooden
board.
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