
Harry Eng, the Master of the “Impossible Bottle” - fortran77
https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/puzzles/amb/eng_botts/harry-eng.htm
======
noman-land
I love impossible objects. I've been obsessed with them since discovering them
in the late 90s. Eng is a legend in the field.

My favorite part of this hobby is that no one will tell you how they made
their bottles unless you're a fellow bottle maker. The whole point is to
encourage people to try their own ideas.

I was inspired to make a number of these myself out of curiosity. I used to
email these guys as a teenager and exchange techniques.

Deck of cards in a bottle is really fun and impressive. Total mind f. The ones
with the cellophane wrapper still in are just great.

[http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-
in-B...](http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-
Bottle-1-1.jpg)

Rubik's cube in a jar is a great one.

[http://images.penguinmagic.com/images/products/original/1258...](http://images.penguinmagic.com/images/products/original/12586a-5845872a9ed5d.jpg)

And I think my favorite of all, the baseball in the salsa jar. Maybe my
favorite art object in the world.

[http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLB-in-
Sal...](http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLB-in-Salsa-
Jar-3-.jpg)

Also a really fun conversation piece to have on a desk or at home. You have no
idea how angry people get when you won't confirm or deny their theories and
tell them to try it themselves. No you can't just push the baseball in by
force.

Just to give you an idea of how insane these people are in their quest. It is
said that Eng invented a tiny vice that could be disassembled, fed piece by
piece into a bottle and reassembled inside. A bent coin would be fed through
the neck of the bottle and the vice would be used to unbend the coin inside
the bottle. The vice is then disassembled and removed.

~~~
matsemann
Cool, no idea how they are done. It's always fun discussing how such objects
are made.

I've spent some time making impossible objects as well. A different kind of
impossible, where the object changes appearance based on where it's viewed
from.

[https://github.com/Matsemann/impossible-
objects](https://github.com/Matsemann/impossible-objects)

~~~
mstade
This blows my mind – well done and thanks for sharing!

------
jandrese
The big wooden sign in the jar is jaw dropping. I figure he must have cut it
into sticks, fed them in, then glue it together then sand down and finish the
outside to hide the lines.

I assume the padlock had to be disassembled and then reassembled inside the
jar as well.

~~~
function_seven
The wooden sign is even more astonishing. Assuming that your guess is correct
(sliced, inserted, glued), then the engraving on the front would need to take
the kerf of the saw cut into account, or else it would show.

Wait, now that I think about it, I bet it was split rather than sawed. The
photo on the site is fairly lo-res, but it does look like straight-grained
wood that would split straight, and would seamlessly glue back up. And it
would reduce the amount of surface work needed afterward. Each piece would key
into the next.

~~~
mattnewton
How would you split it without leaving tooling marks at the top though?

~~~
function_seven
Split it, then remove the tooling marks by slicing off a bit of all the
slices, then insert into the bottle.

------
raxxorrax
Side note: "eng" means narrow, tight or cramped in German.

...fitting.

~~~
JadeNB
And 'fitting' is, of course, the only adjective that could be used here. :-)

------
lapinot
See also the classic spirit bottle with a pear inside:
[https://www.instructables.com/id/Grow-a-Pear-in-a-
Bottle/](https://www.instructables.com/id/Grow-a-Pear-in-a-Bottle/). My
neighbors did a couple some times ago, it's actually quite tricky gardening-
wise, you need to trim the pear buds, need to shade it partially during shiny
days for it not to rot etc.

~~~
noman-land
I've always wanted to try this. Such a cool effect.

------
BottleMagic1
Wow! Thanks for putting links up to my website. I r've been making Impossible
Bottles for over 20 years. Harry Eng is my inspiration and I'm following in
his footsteps. I've even duplicated 7 of his bottles so far. They are fun yet
do take time to make.

~~~
kanobo
Thanks for the site! For us upvoting your site it'll only be fair if you share
with us how you duplicated those 7 bottles.

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ArchD
I wonder if these bottles can get past a TSA airport security check without
breaking them open.

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rv-de
won't most people just outright dismiss the challenge by assuming the bottom
was cut off and reattached?

[https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/puzzles/amb/eng_botts/images/en...](https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/puzzles/amb/eng_botts/images/eng-
bot05.jpg)

There must be a general idea how this has been done if not through bottom off
and on.

------
kanobo
The obvious explanation is we're living in a simulation and the modellers are
just having some fun. Very interesting article btw!

------
aj7
Fraud, involving a means of removing and reattaching the bottle base, is much
more likely than any of the methods I see suggested here.

~~~
raverbashing
Unless you're making a legally binding agreement (or for example, advertising)
that the bottle has not been cut, it's not fraud.

------
plutonorm
I don't believe it. If there were a mastery to this, it would be shared. All
that's happening is they are cutting the bottom off and sealing. If I'm wrong
show me a method for one of the simpler designs.

~~~
Applejinx
I think the simplest design would be the classic, literal, 'ship model built
in a bottle'. And with that, it's literally all about manual dexterity in
gluing together a model of a boat with all the parts glued on from the end of
long tweezers and similar tools. In that case there's nothing 'impossible',
it's just an incredibly tedious and painstaking process, and that's the only
point of it.

~~~
mec31
It’s like pulling teeth through the anus. Theoretically possible, but very,
very difficult.

