Bottle Openers in Maple

I made 24 of these bottle openers this year as office Christmas presents. These started out at 12 board feet of 1×2 hard maple from the home center. The finished openers are just under 6″ long and use a 1 1/4″ fender washer to catch the bottle cap. The finish is tung oil.

IMG_20141222_080912

I tried cutting various designs in plywood before I settled on the design seen below. I clipped the corners of the blanks 5 degrees using a sled made with a piece of scrap 2×4. After cutting the first side, the scrap wedge was used to hold the blank for cutting the opposite side.

IMG_20141219_213910

I then made a template out of a small piece of hardboard to mark the locations for drilling. The center of countersink for bottle is 1/2″ back from the edge and the countersink for the washer is 1 1/8″ back from the edge. Two small nails in the template mark the location to center the drill bit.

IMG_20141219_215342

After the all the cutting and drilling was done, I rounded over all of the edges with my orbital sander. After allowing the tung oil finish to dry, the washers were installed with a 1/2″ stainless steel screw.

IMG_20141219_222833~4

IMG_20141222_080856

IMG_20141219_214106