Photos. Birbs. Wood. Food.

Bottle Opener

bottle opener, laying flat on a blue iPad case

A while back (maybe back in the summer), I ordered a few Niles Bottle Opener Kits from Penn State. This morning, after doing a glue-up on another project, and not being willing to call it a day in the shop yet, I dug one of them out and grabbed a chunk of mimosa that a buddy had sent me, and got to work.

bottle opener, standing upright on a wooden table

This is the result. For my first try with this kit, I think it came out ok. I know of a few things I’ll do better next time around, but it’s a spindle-oriented turning, and I’m getting pretty good with my skew, so any deficiencies are more a matter of not spending the time to figure out a good design than any problems in implementation.

bottle opener, standing upright on a wooden table, reverse view

Anyway, it was a fun project. Turned it, sanded from 60 up to 400 grit, used Ack’s Sanding Paste to partially finish, epoxied the opener into the wood with some five-minute epoxy, cut off the stub-tenon, sanded the end of the handle smooth by hand, and then buffed it all with the Beall Wood Buffing System to make it all pretty. About 75 minutes elapsed for a fun little project.

#woodworking #woodturning #project

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