A mess of them. Some are clearly prettier than others.  Feel free to comment and critique, don’t need to be polite. Every bit helps! 

This is my first punched and drifted bottle opener and has been tested and works perfectly.

The starting stock was 30mm x 5mm, i chose to do the handle as a split flat bar twist i saw on blackbear forges youtube channel.

Here’s a few I made for Christmas gifts. 

Arkham, those are nice. Are those home made letter stamps? 

Arkham: Personalised cube twist openers. Well done, sir!

Arkham - those look great.

This was my attempt at a double ended bottle opener, and my first go at a corkscrew.

Looks good to me. If it pulls a cork all the better. 

Daswolf, they are not. But it’s interesting that you asked. I have been looking at various sizes of stamps and pondered the thought of making my own. 

The shoe turned out wonky, and the horse head was a collaboration with my son. 

Arkham, they are nice large letter stamps and I haven't seen any like that. Perhaps I should look a little harder  

making stamps like that seems like it would be very tedious. 

Das, I think I have a letter set that is 1/2" letters

Just looked and found some online. Even half inch. Guess they will have to wait till I can build up the tool buying money 

 

 

I think harbor freight has some larger ones, haven't tried them ever. They may have only been 3/8" though I think they were half.

                      Littleblacksmith

I'll take a look next time I'm there. 

Gotta try one of those corkscrew things. I'm guessing that mild is not going to handle the torque. So what are you guys using for stock? I'm thinking a high-tensile bolt or a shackle pin. I have some aircraft engine through-bolts that might do. And heat treated or not?

ausfire - I used mild for the one i did and it seems to be working fine so far.

Thanks, Zero. Perhaps I'll make a mild steel one first to practise the method and see how it works.

I came across this earlier today.

Higher carbon than mild, but not hardened. 

Wow, that's a great video, Viking. Thanks for posting that. Mr Aspery makes things look so easy. I see he was using 4140 for the corkscrew, and he said that mild would be too soft. I always thought the screw part would be done by winding the hot metal around a thin former. Not so!

I attempted doing a corkscrew as you described by winding it around something.... it's now sitting buried in a pile of scrap with other failed experiments 

I'll have to try following the video myself and see if I can get any closer on a second attempt... likely just using mild as a practice piece as it's easier to work, and what I have on hand (other than some thick coil springs).

 

Back to the topic at hand, the evolution of my own bottle opener attempts (the more successful ones anyway):

 

 

 

 

With the corkscrew I did I used the technique Mark Asprey demonstrated however I made it a lot shorter, for the balance of the whole piece I thought if it was to long it would feel weird when using the other end.

It still seems to grip in the cork nice and solidly I will have to try it out a few more times to see if it holds up.

10 minutes ago, Zeroclick said:

I will have to try it out a few more times to see if it holds up.

Quality control is extremely important in these matters!!! 

JustAnotherViking - well I will just have to suffer for my art

Gerald Boggs - That looks really cool I like the handle, what steel did you use?

On 1/9/2018 at 2:58 PM, littleblacksmith said:

I think harbor freight has some larger ones, haven't tried them ever. They may have only been 3/8" though I think they were half.

HF has three sizes of letter punches: 1/8", 1/4", and 3/8"

Connecting rods from a Subaru WRX. I wanted to forge the small end into the opener but this stuff would not forge. It would eventually start to crack and just fall apart. Low red heat was better then orange heat and would get me farther along into the process but it would still start cracking. These are forged rods according to a Subaru forum but acted like cast iron.  So we just cut the opener in the end and textured. The one on the left was done with a spring fuller at a black heat. I could not belive how easliy it fullered. Wierd metal. 

What did they end up sparking like when you cut them? 

I like the fullered one, it really pops. 

I like that one too. The pics don't do these justice. We did a spark test. There was 3 of us watching. I had a hard disk on a angle grinder and ground on an old file then the rod. I told the other 2 guys to look for spark length and how it explodes or not. I went back and forth between file and rod and we could not tell any difference. But then I dont have any practice judging sparks. There had to be something we were missing in the sparks because we fullered that one at black heat and it worked well.    I was really looking forward to making a forged opener like I have done before which turned out great with other rods.  Because the guy that brought the rods knows the owner of a Subaru performance shop and he has a box of rods he would give away.