I made two magnetic bottle openers for Christmas. I originally planned on making a third, but the last one had a design that required a laser engraver. My dad bought one for $400 from a Chinese company, but the laser engraver needed some serious TLC. All the mirrors were gross and dirty and just a lot of things about it wasn't consumer ready. I think it'll be okay to use after a few months more of fiddling and fixing.
Anyway I saw these magnetic bottle openers online. These were mostly given as groomsmen presents, but I thought that they looked pretty cool and would make nice Christmas presents.
You'll need the following items to make the bottle opener for yourself:
a piece of wood
wood stain
clear wood finishes
paintbrush
neodymium magnets
nails
wall mounted bottle opener
superglue
I used a CNC milling machine to drill holes for the magnets to fit in, but I suspect that the typical household doesn't have one available for use. A drill press with a spade bit the same size as your magnets should work just fine.
Before I started making the openers, I made a tester bottle cap opener to see the magnet catching results.
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| Drill bit pathway on Linux CNC for drilling magnet holes |
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| Tester wood strip- many holes were made (front side and back too) |
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| Bottle opener tester on magnet- duct tape was used to stick the magnets in place. Determined that the force used to make the bottle opening action is not so big that it would cause the bottle opener itself to come off of the fridge... good! |
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| The cabinet doors had paint on it from its previous life of being cabinet doors so I had to remove the paint using paint remover. Simply brush a generous layer of the stuff onto the wooden surface and wait about fifteen minutes. The original paint and the goop you layered on scrapes right off. Is good to sand the wood pieces afterwards. |
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| Then I stained the wood pieces. I did this step wrong. The instructions said to use a rag to wipe off the excess. I didn't really understand what constitutes to being "in excess" so I added too much paint. It took forever to dry and since I was in a crazy time crunch (gotta finish these by Christmas and I only had T minus forty eight hours) I removed the paint and stained the wood all over. |
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| I used a CNC milling machine to drill holes for the magnets. There are two types of hole depth needed: one just deep enough for the magnets to be flush with the wood surface and the other way deeper in order to be able to catch bottle caps falling on the other side. |
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| Removing the stain I put before and re-staining had results that ended up looking like this. I wish it was stained darker, but I needed to finish these quickly. Oh! And I also applied the glossy finish after staining. The glossy finish took a few hours to dry, but to cure properly it required a full week. I did not have a full week. Also those are not my feet. |
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| I used the CNC milling machine and cut out the words "FU MAN" on the used to be cabinet door. Please note, I am not cursing at the man. My friend's last name is Fu and I am guessing people call him Fu Man really often because it is all over his Facebook. I couldn't think of any other personalized detail to add so I opted for the FU MAN. |
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| Now it is time to put the magnets into the back. I used simple gorilla super glue to glue the magnets flush with the wooden surface. It holds well and is strong enough to stick onto the fridge. The glue is also strong enough that if you take the bottle opener off of the fridge the magnets wouldn't be more attracted to the fridge and come off, but I was not too certain if the magnets would somehow scratch the fridge. I didn't want to risk that because I am sure my friends have beautiful refrigerators so I padded the back with some duct tape. |
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| For the magnets that need to catch the bottle caps, my dad used his lathe machine and made little plugs the size of the magnet holes. It fit so elegantly in the back that it felt almost sinful having duct tape padding the wooden bottle opener piece and taking away how nice it would have looked without it. Granted, the back of the wooden opener was messily and accidentally stained with the wood stain in random splotches and I didn't bother to sand that off so... eh. |
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| Both of the wooden magnetic bottle openers. Looks really nice if I say so myself!!! |
IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.macsindustrial.com/style/beerBottle.jpg
