Using white salt in clear glass milk bottles

I would like to know if it is a good ideal to use white salt in antique clear milk bottle to make them look full....Will the salt damage the glass at all over time???
Thanks

I have seen people use the little styrofoam beads from "Bean Bag" chairs.

Steve A W

I'd say the salt won't bother anything. I say this because I grew up with glass salt and pepper shakers, and one set I can remember seeing since I was very young (I'm 45 now) looks no different now than it did all those years ago. That said, I've seen many old milk bottles displayed on sites online and, as Steve says, they all seem to use white styrofoam beads.

Have you ever seen a Bordens Condensed Milk bottle? Reading your post got me to thinking about one of the old bottles I saved from the trash about 20 years ago. I had gone on a service call to repair an older womans oil furnace. Sitting on her picnic table was a ribbed, bottle embossed with an eagle and the words Bordens Concensed Milk Company. The thing was in perfect condition. As we began to leave the lady came out and I asked her about it. Her response was, "Oh, that's where I set that thing. I was headed for the trash with it the other day and got distracted and set it down. Do you want it?" My affirmative response took about a quarter of a second and I took off through the pouring rain to the back yard to get it. Over the years I have seen a few of them online, but never took the time to research it any further, until I read your post. Based on the info in the link below my bottle dates between 1900 and 1919. I've got to say I think this bottle is officially the oldest thing I own. It's amazing that a glass bottle could survive, in perfect shape, for a hundred years or more. That's just cool.....

That said check out the two sites, there is some good info on both of them.
cool link

cool link number two

Hi Kevin,
Actually you have given me an idea. I have ONE milk bottle left that has survived from the days when our family sold milk from the farm. I filled it with perlite , (That stuff that you mix with garden compost to lighten the texture), but it is not quite 'white' enough if you know what I mean.

You can buy pure white sand, if you don't want to use salt (though I don't think salt would hurt your glass). Probably available at a store that sells craft/art supplies. (Our daughter and her husband poured sand from two vials into a heart shaped container during their wedding...one sand was pure white).

Why don't you pour milk in it and use it?

I don't think the salt would hurt the bottle but salt will cake and get hard as a rock and would be impossible to later get out and also would do rusting on any metal object close to it.

Salt wont hurt but fine sand would scuff the interior over time I would think (if the bottles were moved a lot). Personally I stuffed mine with cotton wads (available in the beauty aides department at Wally World). Packed in really dense and up on a shelf it looked good enough and I knew cotton wouldn't hurt the glass!

White styro foam beeds

I have two - a quart and a half-gallon - clear glass antique milk bottles that I filled with white salt almost 15 years ago. They still look full and the glass is still clear. It works good.