Jacketed bottle and methods of making same

The method of protecting glass bottles from bottle-weakening abrasion and scratches, each bottle having a body and a neck and a generally conical transition from the upper end of the body to the neck, with a shoulder at the junction of said body and said transition, said method comprising feeding forward bottles standing upright one after another in a predetermined generally horizontal path, placing a jacket on each bottle as it travels forward along said path, the jacket being a pre-formed paper jacket having an upper generally conical portion slightly larger than said generally conical transition of the bottle and a lower generally cylindrical body portion slightly larger than the body of the bottle, said conical portion of the jacket being open at its upper end and said cylindrical portion of the jacket being open at its lower end, the jacket being telescopically applied lower end first to the bottle over the upper end of the bottle and moving downwardly on the bottle to position the jacket with the conical portion of the jacket surrounding and contiguous to the exterior surface of the conical transition of the bottle and the cylindrical portion of the jacket surrounding and contiguous to the exterior surface of the body of the bottle, passing each bottle with a jacket thereon through a humidifying zone to humidify the entire jacket, and then passing each bottle with the humidified jacket thereon through a drying zone to dry the jacket and cause it to shrink on the bottle.