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I Forge Iron

Show me your Bottle Openers!


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Nice work GB. I'm going to try some wood handles too.

Been stocking up for Xmas. I'm going for volume, and I have a lot of golfers in the family. If you're curious, golf grips fit nicely on 1/2" round stock. I cut the grip to length with a pair of scissors and sand the cut end even on my small HF 1" belt sander. Soapy water helps for a lubricant to get the grip installed, or you can use grip tape and some grip lube like installing a regular grip.

If you know what type of irons your recipient uses, you can use a matching grip for that personalized touch. The middle opener is a Callaway grip which is going to my brother.

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Scored a big bag of random tools recently, and also had some broken socket wrenches so tonight I took 2 of each and made some bottle openers.... The 5/8" open ended wrenches are nice to work with since there is no punching and drifting needed. I basically flatten them down, then work the ring down on the horn of my little anvil till they fit the bottle. The broken sockets took a little more work. The craftsman one had the internals that wouldn't come out so I just cut the end off,but I still had plenty of material to mash down before punching.  The knurled handled one the internals popped out easy and I was left with a nice ring to flatten like the box wrenches. I finished them off with a brass brushing and beeswax. These are going to make their way to a craft bizarre next weekend.

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Some great openers there. The one with the knurled handle looks like a socket wrench with the middle knocked out.

I am writing this on an i-phone as we had a massive summer storm that knocked out our computers, fried two TVs and blew the bore pump. The lightning strike shook the whole place ... and me. 

Today’s demo didn’t happen. Just too hot to light the forge. I had two ram head bottle openers to make but they’ll have to wait.

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6 hours ago, olydemon said:

These are going to make their way to a craft bizarre next weekend.

Is that a commentary on the people attending the event?

Nice openers!  I've got some similar fodder that I'd like to give the same treatment.

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I’ve almost got all 22 openers finished.

Two to go & I can start shipping these out to the Marines & fellow Officers I work with for Christmas.

Is it odd to get tired of making the same thing over & over?

Even if there’s interest and potential $$$?

Honestly, I dont want to make another opener for a while!!!

 

 

 

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On 12/4/2018 at 7:26 AM, ausfire said:

Some great openers there. The one with the knurled handle looks like a socket wrench with the middle knocked out.

Thanks! The middle 2 are in fact old socket wrenches that had chipped ratchets so they didnt work well.

On 12/4/2018 at 9:37 AM, HojPoj said:

Is that a commentary on the people attending the event?

Nice openers!  I've got some similar fodder that I'd like to give the same treatment.

Yes, Bizarre old ladies making tiny felt replicas of their corgies...

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Tell them they make great pincushions!

Some people thrive on production work; others get bored to tears and start messing up as they try experiments and variations. If you have a good "Bread & Butter" product; try to get your therbligs as low as possible and develop a mindset that working on them is a good thing.  Some people like doing a few every day and other like doing a pile of them all at once.

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I finally finished this one, intended for a friend of mine who's an operating engineer. The head was either a 16mm or 3/4" Grade 5 bolt - I don't remember which. I tried to make a handle out of rebar, but couldn't get it to peen properly, so I cut it off and made one out of 1/2" mild steel. Surface finish is black oxide.

There are some things I'm not thrilled with, but I'm pretty happy overall.

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It’s the finishing that gets old for me.

The polishing of the metal & handle material, though it is satisfying when / if they turn out.

The rough forging is always fun & I don’t get tired of that.

Wish I could just leave it rough.... 

 

 

I meant to get a “family “ photo when they were all done but I’d already sent out some of them before I remembered to do so.

 

 

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Made this opener from some 1/2" mild steel square bar. To get more material on the opener end I did a few rounds of upsetting the end to add bulk. I punched the hole in 2 heats. This is a pretty good improvement for myself. It used to take me like 5+ heats. Once drifted and shaped, I started to work on the chiseled lines. I was thinking I may try a cube twist, but I was running out of time for the night so I just decided to twist the lines.... and since I was on a reverse twist theme with my plant hook I did it again on this. At first I wasn't totally happy, but I gave it a bit more twist and it ended up looking pretty cool. Then to give it a little more flare I drew the tail down and curled it up. Finished with heat temper and a beeswax coating.

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Hey everybody, how's it going? Relatively new here and new to working with steel. Finished up building a forge & burner from David Hammer's design this summer and have been playing around since, seeing what I can do to the material. Enjoying the challenge/skill building associated with working with limited tools. Anyway, I've made a few leaves and a bunch of hooks and now I've cobbled together a bottle opener design that I'm happy to repeat and maybe give as gifts this year. Seems to carry enough basic principals of material movement to be a worthwhile technique builder.

I start with about 4 to 5 inches (can't remember, measurement is scribbled on my bench) of mild steel flat stock, 1/4" x 1". Isolate a little over an inch on one end for the opener and draw it out to about 9" in length. Scroll the bottom end, drift the opening for the opener, forge the bottom bend, then lock the bottom in the vise and twist, trying to mirror the twists. Forge the catch, clean up a bit, then finish with Johnson's paste wax.

They're a bit rough, and I prefer a more slender taper/scroll than the one pictured, but I'm pretty happy with them in general and having fun. Photos are crappy, shot at my desk at work but you can probably get the idea. I'm a noob and any critiques are always welcome.

 

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Interesting, have not tried this but I can see the benefit. Achieve essentially the same thing in one heat and maybe less finicky if I get my heat right? I can definitely envision the movement needed to achieve what you're describing but have not seen the jig setup. I do have access to an old arc welder and have just enough skill with it to (in the wise(?) words of AvE) fabricobble things together with it. Seems worth a try. I've not quite graduated from the work harder into the work smarter phase so thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

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One such jig has two adjustable wrenches mounted to separate pieces of angle iron to be clamped to a workbench or in a postvise---depending on length being worked. Set them for the length and thickness to be worked then heat that length in the workpiece, drop it in the slots and place a 3rd wrench in the middle and twirl!

If you work a lot of the same size steel you could drill and saw slots into two heavier pieces to use as uprights instead of the wrenches.  I like a narrow jaw wrench for the center one to reduce the size of the blank area.

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I wish. Most that I'm aware of in the periphery of Rochester NY close until spring/summer, though I just remembered there's a massive one in Clarence NY, (near Buffalo) that's open year round. Might put together a one or two sized notched jig akin to your suggestion in the meantime. I'd like to test the waters and attempt to sell a bit this summer. At least enough to fund fuel and steel, and keep the learning going. Thanks again Thomas.

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