I lied about doing it this weekend, fired up the forge and knocked it out tonight

That's nice, mate. And was the burn on your forefinger worth it?

Nah that's just a callous that was coming off lol

Here's one I did this weekend out of 5/8 square. Gonna keep working on the animal heads, and the cube twist looks cool, takes some patience though! Lol

Looks like a dragon head to me, and the cube twist adds to the effect. Nice work Nick. 

Let's bring some life into this topic again

I have only pre-finishing pictures of these but you can see the things that matter. Experimenting with some old harrow elements.

I have been working on a few lately, the slit and drift one is my first attempt of this type so is a little rough, but overall happy enough - it actually opens a bottle so meets the most stringent part of the brief!

Made some openers over the weekend out of some flat stock. Tried a different technique then the first 2 that I made after watching some vids on the YouTube. Let me know what you think. Still need to be cleaned up and put some sort of finish on them. 

They look functional. Have you tested them? Aside from that, the more you make the more you will improve. Maybe experiment with hammer texturing. I think they need a little something to stand out. I can see the improvement from what I'd guess in an earlier one on the left in the third picture. 

As far as a finish there are a couple threads discussing that. For things like bottle openers I use a mixture of bees wax, boiled linseed oil and turpentine. Applied while Basically just too hot to hold but if it smokes the wax it's too hot.  There are other finishes as well. 

 

Forged an opener from a recycled aircraft through-bolt this morning. The ram's head was a bit tricky on round stock ... I usually use 10 or 12mm square. This 10mm steel was super hard too, and there wasn't much meat to make the loop opener. Wasn't too worried about it getting thin as it has good tensile strength and didn't bend when tested under pressure. I like these recycled bolts despite their hardness, as they take a good shine.

Here it is beside one of those bolts:

 

Aus, I need an aircraft mechanic friend! haha awesome work. 

Should be a good seller to pilots and if they can afford to run a plane....

11 hours ago, Daswulf said:

Aus, I need an aircraft mechanic friend! haha awesome work. 

Yes, he's pretty handy. I often find these bolts, along with assorted cams, bearings, pistons and valves dumped at my gatepost. A lot of aircraft parts are aluminium (for obvious reasons) so I have to sort them out first.

And Thomas, yes, they do sell well to pilots, although this is the first I have done with the ram's head. Usually the centre piece of the bolt forms the handle. You don't need to tell me about affording planes. We owned a Cessna 172 and the maintenance cost was the killer. 100 hourlies were just too expensive and you are not allowed to do any maintenance yourself. We cross-hired it to a flight training organisation to recoup some funds but it was sad to see what ab-initio pilots did to it. We sold our plane after that.

We're seeing a lot of horses being "dumped" out here as the cost of feed and hoof care is getting too high for folks. (My neighbor is a commercial international pilot and was talking of putting in a strip next door for "commuting".)

Nice work Aus that original feature you leave on those air craft bolts looks great, isn`t it boody hot up you way?

16 hours ago, stan said:

Nice work Aus that original feature you leave on those air craft bolts looks great, isn`t it boody hot up you way?

Yeah, Stan, summer's here. Up here on the Tablelands we get a bit of relief from the humidity of Cairns (altitude at my forge: 3000ft), but it still gets a bit uncomfortable after a couple of hours of demos. I don't work at the forge after midday on these hot ones. I see Sydney's sizzling too at the moment.

The original bit on those openers is the only indication that it's a repurposed through-bolt. Only aircraft engineers recognise it of course and that's what appeals I think. I leave that part on snakes too.

Aus, I've seen the rams head tutorials where they cut down the sides of material towards the face, and lift up and curl to make the horns,  but it doesn't look like you'd have enough material for that, did you split the end and fold it over for the head?
It looks awesome.

Forged from some very messy 3/8"-ish round rod:

tumble it smooth and you have a very nice key ring fob and bottle opener for folks who hang their keys up instead of carrying them in a pocket.

Here's some from the last week or so. Playing around with different ideas, some just going with it. 

As someone that has forged and sold over 10,000 openers with last 5 years, simple is best  With the exception of the Wizard which is a good demo piece.

 

tried two different methods one is vastly easer than the other. saw the owl on YouTube and gave it a try.

So I made my very first bottle opener today. Here it is!!!

Good job

Nice work Marcy. 

Pickling it should loosen up the scale then wire wheeling it will make it look even better. Wish my first looked that good