Beer Bottle Opener With Magnetic Top Catcher

by Stevens Workshop in Workshop > Woodworking

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Beer Bottle Opener With Magnetic Top Catcher

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Bottle opener with magnetic top catcher

My brother in law inspired this project, he has a bottle opener on the wall in his kitchen but every time you open a bottle you have to quickly catch the top or pick it up off the floor. I decided to make something a little better.

Supplies

Wood from my scraps bin
Bottle opener from Amazon
Magnet 40 x 20 x 5 mm N52 from First4Magnets

Selecting the Wood

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I have a number of bits of wood lying around my workshop and selected this piece of oak and a couple of strips of western red cedar.

Layup, Plane and Level

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To add a little bit of detail I decided to rip the piece of oak lengthwise and insert the two western red cedar strips. This was glued with Titebond wood glue clamped and left to dry overnight.

Once the glue was dry I ran the finished piece through my thicknesser to get to a nice flat surfaces and then across the jointer to square of the edges.

Cut the Parts

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With the piece now level and square I chopped it to length for the individual openers, I was able to get five parts out of the length of oak I had. These were each 270 mm long.

I cut the corners off each piece to give it a bit of interest and not have it quite so Square. I ran a 45° bevel around the top and bottom going a little bit deeper on the top.

I also cut a couple of screw slots in the back to enable it to be hung on the wall. This was routed out using a Trend screw slot bit.

Start of the Finishing

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Because the grain of the wood I had used what's so beautiful I decided I wanted to enhance it rather than hide it.

This I did using three coats of Danish oil, each coat was left to dry for approximately 3 to 4 hours and then any excess oil was wiped off, between each coat a very light sanding using 240 grit sandpaper was also done. The final coat was left to fully dry overnight.

Final Finish

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To give the openers a bit of a protective finish I decided to add a few coats of polyurethane varnish. They are after all probably going to have beer spilled on them.

I had never applied at polyurethane varnish on top of a Danish oil finish so decided to try it out on a piece of scrap plywood that I'd also put oil on and the back of one of the openers.

I'm very pleased to report that the varnish took just fine, seems to have a fairly good at adhesion without any bubbles or other problems.

Polyurethane Varnish

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The varnish was applied using a 30 mm wide brush.

It has a satin finish which when dried looks beautiful.

I applied four coats of varnish leaving 4 to 5 hours between each coat, between each coat I knocked off any dust particles and bubbles that appeared in the finish using a 1200 grit sandpaper.

Fitting the Magnet and Opener

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Once the final coat of varnish had fully dried (over night) I routed out a hole in the back of the wood to take the rare earth magnet. The magnet is a 40 x 20 x 5 mm, neodymium, N52 type bought from First4Magnets. I took great care at this stage to make sure that I didn't burst through the front of the piece leaving approximately 5 mm of wood.

The magnet is held in place with a generous helping of hot glue.

I then flipped each piece over and screwed on the bottle opener using stainless steel pan head screws.

As you can see from the video the magnet grabs the tops very easily. It's an incredibly strong magnet and I think it will probably hold 20 to 30 bottle tops.