Simple, functional, pleasing to the eye.  Well done, Davor.  Now, go pop the cap on a cold one for us.

On 2/4/2021 at 11:38 PM, blacksmith-450 said:

Rock you !!!

 

 

I love this! But it makes me think, I might have to try one where the hand is what opens the bottle.

I don't know if I have the skills and finesse to pull it off but I'll keep it in mind for the future!

cheers,

Jono.

That's a cool idea. You could forge a hand in a fist with the index finger extended but curled and the thumb barely across the fist the thumbnail would be the tab to pop the top.

Hmmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

Childishly I agreed to make this one leading up to Christmas, in China it means good luck and Winston Churchill used the gesture for victory but sadly neither was the sentiment behind this one. 

Some of us out of the UK know it too.  Was it popular?

Hi Thomas hope you’re well. Yes, it was for someones son who was moving out. I ended up making a few and some inoffensive ones

Doing OK, temp 68F (20C) but winds gusting to 40mph (64 kph) and humidity down to 8% so high fire danger. Glad my forge is in a steel building!  I'll have 2 weeks after my second of the Double Tap shots on St Patrick's Day and will be teaching a short "Intro to smithing Course up at the Uni that weekend.

How's life where moisture abounds?

Once you get the preform done there are a number of hand gestures you can go with---some of them clean...like the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper". (We used to invert it for "Die Young and Rot")

Glad you got the jab 

yes, it’s raining! The horizontal kind. But the days are beginning to stretch and there’s a just hint of spring in the air! 

 Both my wife and I are high risk so we went for the jab as soon as we could.  Our county is opening up more  and we're ready to get back towards a new normal.

We get high winds in the spring;  we're inland, over 800 miles to a beach, We can have 80 mph winds in the spring and being dry; dust and sand are what blows sideways.   Most of our rain is sporadic thunder storms during the summer; 9" of precipitation a year. Unfortunately our house is in the rain shadow of a mountain so we get less most years.

New Mexico is about 1.3 times the size of the UK; and there are two more states between the Pacific Ocean and NM, Arizona and California.  So I avoid seafood out here. (Grew up on the east coast of the USA where the fishing boats would dock at the end of the pier the seafood restaurants were on...)  We do have sheep and cattle out here and a lot of game. There is even trout fishing up in the mountains; not even a creek down here.

Deb and I are officially at the full potency date for our second arm stick so we're doing something we haven't in better than a year. We'd having dinner at Chepos!! I'm going to enjoy a #1 or  taco salad and a pina colada. 

I'm excited, I've been eating my own cooking long enough for now.

Alaska Governor, Dunleavy wrote an executive order Monday I think making vaccines available for anybody over 16 who wants one. The native villages and cities are fully vaccinated, want it or not, their communities their rules. 

Things are beginning to sneak back up on normal . . . ish. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

My friends in Juneau were just commenting  on how thoroughly and well the vaccination has gone where they are. 

Ohio just opened up the wait list for 50-and-over, so Lisa and I are scheduled for our first shots this coming Monday. 

Great news about vaccinations going well. Enjoy your dinner Frosty.  I think the use of cutlery in public will be something I’ll need to practice again. (Half joking)

You use cutlery when eating in public?  Things are different across the pond!

Live long and prosper ! 

 

good job !!!

 

Nicely done!

On 3/14/2021 at 5:24 PM, blacksmith-450 said:

Live long and prosper ! 

Peace and long life!

I like it. :)

A quickie, and it shows.

Made these today. All of them are keychains as well.

 

  

As more and more glass bottles are replaced by cans, I've started adding a short wedge to the front of the ring so they can also be used for cans. I just use my fingernail, but there are a lot of people who don't want/like to. The idea actually came from a bartender. They open up a lot of cans in a night and this saves their nails the trouble.

Bartenders like those little pop top wedges for cans. I like the skull. I've been trying to work out how to do a Steal Your Face for a while. 

Pnut

 

 

Leftovers from holiday sales.  I always try to keep a selection of bottle openers available.  I never know who is going to ask for one.  A few $$ here and there never hurts.  

My second stick is tomorrow.  The HABA smithies haven't been open for over a year.  The members are getting restless. 

I was asked to make a bottle opener as a birthday present, so came here looking for ideas. Thanks to Frazer, that was a fruitful search! Here's my version...

...and then my good lady told me that her friend likes skulls, but loves aliens much more.

As a beginner, I think I'm learning a lot from these already. Seeing how things work, compared to what I planned. This one really highlighted the importance of figuring out the best sequence. For example, next time I'll shape the face/handle more before working on the opening. Those 'cheekbones' worked ok on the skull but aren't what I wanted for the alien. 

I also took this opportunity to practice heat treating. Although it's mild, I went through the motions as if I was tempering a blade and really enjoyed getting the colours to run. I live off-grid, so electric oven tempering isn't possible. Hence I need to learn more traditional methods. 

Looks good, an Area 51 bottle opener. Nice depiction of a gray. You might even want to make a big oval eye punch.

Thanks Ted, of course I can mostly see the ways it fell short but I'm reasonably happy with it.

Yes, part of this is figuring out what tools I want to add to the collection. Perhaps a teardrop punch could have enough uses to be worth making.