I needed something to open up the bottle openers I've tried.  I didn't have a big drift and had no luck finding one reasonable.  went to the scrap yard and picked up a piece of steel that is about 1.25 inches.  Not sure what it was had an eye in it and an amateur welded foot on it.  It was about 9 pounds at 25 cents a pound.  a total novice, but the grind test showed it to be between mild and tool steel.  here are a couple shots.  would have worked it longer but the weld on my handle broke and I was getting worn out anyway.  I need to get a striker

 

 

Nice, great re-purpose!

Now that’s a drift!

thanks charles

 

Thanks mtn stream

You don't really need a long tapered drift for bottle openers anyway. Good job. 

Moving larger martial sure is some work by yourself. Lately I had some 2 1/4" torsion bar that really made me work for it with 4# and 6# hand hammers. Good strikers are tough to come by and usually not a steady thing. 

Cool! Let us know how it works out.

That’s a beast!  I don’t even have a hole in my entire shop that I could drive that through.  Kudos for the hard work forging that thing.  It looks straight and true.  Keep your eyes out for some barrel drift pins used by iron workers.  I got my hands on a bunch of them cheap and use them for drifting bottle openers and for forging the rounded lip on the opener.  I recently saw a Brian Brazeal video (he’s started posting to YouTube again) and he uses them as well.

28 minutes ago, Lou L said:

I don’t even have a hole in my entire shop that I could drive that through.  

Stacked up gears and bearings utilizing the larger center hole work over the hardy hole for larger drifting. 

thanks guys.  most of the work was with my largest hand hammer, a #4.  Really don't know how I'd do with a much larger hammer.  

I gave the drift a run yesterday on a couple bottle openers.  It worked great.  the result was just as the tutorials show.  From there it went caveman.