My first attempt at another style of bottle opener did not work out as planned and it did not turn out to be a bottle opener in any fashion. It was supposed to be the basic bottle opener you would usually see beginner and experienced blacksmiths make. You know, the kind with a large hole and a lip that grabs hold of the bottle cap to pop it off? Similar to one that is at the top of a wine bottle opener.
I have made various bottle openers over the past year or so, but none of them involve hot punching a hole. In fact, I have never hot punched a hole until this project. I decided to give this a try and attempt a couple blacksmithing techniques that I have not yet tried. One being hot punching and the other enlarging the hole after punching it. Little did I really know that enlarging the hole was going to be my second task to learn with this project. I went into this project pretty blindly not knowing the steps it takes to make the bottle opener and it was a good learning experience.
I did not know exactly what tools to use or what size of metal stock to start off with. It was all a guess, but by the end of the project, it all worked out for the best.
The steps in making this heart:
I first started with a piece of flat stock (1/4″ x 3/4″ x 6″ or so) and heated it up in the forge to a nice reddish yellow color.
I then pulled it out of the fire and rested the whole stock on the face of the anvil. I needed something to hole it down firmly while I punch the hole, so I used one of my woodworking hold-downs and stuck it the pritchel hole of the anvil. With a good tap with the hammer, it stays in nicely and the hot stock barely moves.
Some time ago I got my hands on a homemade 3/8″ diameter tapered punch. It has a flat tip that is maybe 1/4″ diameter. This is what I used to punch the hole. I do not know how good the temper is or what kind of steel this punch is made of, but it seems to be holding up pretty good so far. My guess is that it was made from a piece of coil spring.
After a few reheats of the metal stock and before the punch goes all the way through, I reheated it once again. You can see from the back side of the metal a dark spot where the metal is now the thinnest. This is because it cools fastest at this thin part and begins to return to its normal color faster than the thicker parts.
Put this upside down over the pritchel hole and knock out that last remaining piece of slug.
While still over the pritchel hole, finish running the punch through until it gets to the widest part of the punch. A reheat maybe necessary.
I found that it was a little tricky getting the hot metal off the punch. This is another thing I learned from this project and that is to lay the edge of the hot metal stock on the face of the anvil and give it some small hits from the hammer around the punch. This will thin out the metal and loosen it from the punch. This is something to remember for later on and you will see why in a second.
Where it went wrong:
So, after I made the hole, I knew it was too small to properly fit over the bottle cap. I didn’t think it through on how to make the hole bigger. I thought that I needed to come up with a larger punch to the size of hole I wanted. This is not the case.
What I should have done was to put the hole over the horn of the anvil and work it with the hammer. This will thin out the metal ring portion while making the hole larger. This is the trick stated above that needed to be remembered that I did not think about.
Doing this, just make sure you have enough metal that you can work with while it gets thinner. Do not punch the hole too close to the end of the metal. Approximately 3/8″ is probably all you need to the edge, but I don’t think there is much science to this. The more you leave, the larger the hole you can make because there will be more metal you can work with and move around.
The new creation:
Because I failed to realize how to make the hole larger, I decided to play around with this now scrap piece of metal and use my spring fuller on it. This is how I got the tapered end at the bottom of the heart. I worked it down to where it was thin enough to easily break it loose, nearly paper thin.
Then my father-in-law suggested to try making a heart out of it.
All it took was another heat in the forge, stick it in the vise and used a dull chisel and hammer to punch the top of the heart down. It actually worked pretty good!
To make it useful, I turned it into a key ring.
Moral of the story:
Just because one project does not work out as originally planned, does not mean that you need to throw away what you just made. It can usually be made into something else, and in this case, it got turned into something that a lot of people really seemed to enjoy and it was recently sold at a craft fair we attended the other weekend.
Conclusion:
This was a fun project and I will definitely try to make it again to sell so that other people can enjoy this hand forged creation. In addition to a key ring, I might make it into a necklace as well. I think there are a lot of people out there that will love this as a gift.
If you are interested in this creation for yourself or for someone else, but don’t want to make it, keep an eye out on our Etsy store and it may show up on there soon. It might be a while until I make it again, but only because I really do not make it out to the forge as often as I would like; maybe once or twice a weekend if I am lucky. You can find the link to the Etsy store at the top of this page. You can also keep an eye out on my Facebook page for updates.
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