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I have to say that this post was an inspiration to make openers. I am pretty new at this, and these are bottle openers numbers More playing with making bottle openers. 2-7, so they are not as polished or nice as the ones here, but I am learning. I am getting faster at forming the eye, and am quickly learning the order of doing things in making one of these. I still have more tooling to make, and I might get faster still. All advice, ideas and criticisms welcome. 1/2 inch square bar, cut and twisted the end. 5/8 square, pretty heavy, just a twist. crappy 3/4 combo wrench, bent The beast. almost 9 inches long of twisted 5/8, and I wanted to try a fish tail on the end too, so there it is. This one has some misshapen dice on the end. I think I cut the grooves a little too much, but it works for now. Thanks to all for the advice given on my previous bottle opener post

This one works great. Very easy to open a bottle with. My openers still need some refining, but I'll get there. Good point on the twists (no pun intended) Thanks, I'll give the ball pein hammer a try. I have a few that can be messed with.

Ok, yesterday I made number 2 forged opener. I was out of 1/2 inch square, so I used 5/8. I did better, and was faster too. Changed the tip of the chisel into a better more pointed shape (wow, what a difference), and made a couple bigger drifts. Thanks for the tips all. Now I just wanna keep making more. Merry Christmas to all!!

Great info. Thank You! I will give it a try. Hopefully this weekend.

That's funny. I have a couple of big bolts sitting in some vinegar now, for that exact reason.

Please offer suggestions. It's hard to learn if you don't hear suggestions or constructive criticism. Thank you for posting. Really, what I need to do is make the appropriate sized tooling to make this a bit more efficient, and then on to practice and more practice. One question I have then, are you punching the end as it is, or do you upset it or flatten it out some? I watched Black Frogs video, and have been looking at the various bottle opener posts, and it seems everyone has their own way. Those openers are great, by the way. Thanks Again

Thanks all, I will try using a drift on my next one. And I need to make some better punches. I can see this becoming a pattern, make a project, make new tools to make the same project easier, repeat. Oh, and the opener works quite well I am happy to say. It was going to be a birthday present, but now it is a present for me. I'll post more pics as I do them.

I am pretty new to forging things. I have heated up and bent or straightened things, but haven't really forged anything. I have to say, it is pretty fun moving metal. This is my first bottle opener made from start to finish. I have done some others where I started with something (like a wrench or even a sphere) but this was just a piece of old threaded rod. This was my third try, the first two were on 1/2 inch square bar. but both of those split at the opening, so I thought I would give it one more try with this. There was a hole already where I planned to make the eye of the opener, but this one split too. So I made the hook type out of it. It was some work moving that metal. This was supposed to be a birthday present, but I might have to keep it. It was a really good project, and I learned a lot. I think on my next one using a progression of punches gradually getting bigger might be better. There is a ton more I need to learn, and I now need to make a bunch of tooling.

Well, I finally got time to play around with my little forge and try out a couple of things. I recently finished up a press break to put bends in angle iron to make some furniture legs that I have had on my list for quite awhile. There may be a faster easier way to do this, but this is what was in my head. I had to do a little persuading at the second bend, as the metal flared outwards a bit, but I am relatively happy with it. I need to do a little more tweaking on the break, since the channel I used was not quite up to snuff for the 20 ton press. In fact, I need to do some tweaking on the press too, but that's what I get for using a Harbor Freight press. The rectangular tubing I just heated up and put in the press, I was hoping for a more uniform "bulge" more gradual, but I went a little too far. Also, one side bulged in and the other 3 sides went out. I will have to experiment with making sure they all go outwards. The last is a bottle opener from a 16 mm wrench. I had to push it a little out of round to make it work, since I made the circle a bit too big. All in all a good learning experience.

The trees are great. As with those above, I say kick the habit! As for pictures, what I did and it seems to work well is: make a photo box. I used PVC pipe, made an open 4 x 4 x 4 foot cube. Go to a thrift store and get an old sheet, I used white-ish. drape this over the top and the two sides, secure it with clamps. Then you can order seamless photography paper, comes in various colors in a long roll. have that hang down from the top back to the bottom front in a gradual curve. On a nice bright day, set the thing up outside and take pics. If you have a good camera, put it on a tripod and let it do its thing. Sorry I don't have any pics of the setup. And of course if your projects are really big, then it makes it much harder, but it looks like your trees should fit in something like that easy. And, it breaks down to a pretty small package. Good Luck.

That is awesome. You'd get my vote too!

Here are pics of the forge and the blower. I still need to disassemble the blower and clean it. From what I have read on here oil is better than grease for the bearings, the interesting thing is that this blower has zirk fittings for grease, and from what I understand they must have been added later, not originally. Forge looks to be about 1/8 inch thick. For the liner, I like firebrick idea if that will work. I will have to move the forge to use it, so keeping the weight down would be great. If mixing up a sand cement type liner is far superior, then fabbing some wheel mounts to one end is really not much of an issue. Thanks for the ideas

Hello all, I am new to all this, but thanks to my brother have caught this blacksmithing bug. I have spent a lot of time reading old posts and generally becoming more inspired. I have a new to me buffalo forge (will take some pics tomorrow) my question is; should the bottom be lined with sand or anything to "protect" it from the heat? I will most likely use charcoal to start. I have read a lot of the old posts, but have not read anything on this one way or another. Thanks in advance, and I look forward to posting some pics of projects.

Very Cool.

I would be interested in seeing it. But if everyone else has already seen it or something like it then... Of course I am brand new at this and am interested in seeing just about everything blacksmith related get done. That being said, I love the look of the pattern welded steels and hope to make some of my own sometime in the near future.

Looks like you got it right. Sure looks like leather to me. Are you going to patina it?

Thanks again, makes sense on the middle number. Here are a few pics of it, if I can get them uploaded. I still need to get it cleaned up, and then put it to work.

1901, sweet. Thanks for looking that up. I snapped a few pics, and should have them posted this afternoon. 170 pounds sounds good, 1901 is awesome, but who was number 8? Thanks again.

Hello all, I am new to the site and a newbie at blacksmith work. So my brother helped out getting a nice old buffalo forge and some miscellaneous hammers, and a pretty nice Hay Budden anvil. I would love to know a little more about it if anyone can help me out. I have been perusing the othe anvil posts, and would like to clean it up a little, and put it to work. I have read on here to wirewheel it and put some Johnsons paste wax on it. Is that the best way to go? Anvil Serial number is:65530 it could be 65332 or 65330. Couple of the numbers are hard to read. There is also a number 8 stamped sideways under the horn. The weight markings (I assume they are weight markings) are 1 7 0. It seems like that should be 170 pounds, there is no way they can be the same as the English markins, that would make it almost 300 pounds. After reading on here I am pretty excited about this anvil. Might need to get it a new stump though. Thanks all, hopefully I will be posting up some forged projects soon.