How to Make a Bottle Prison

TL;DR: I designed a bottle jail or bottle prison, go to the next step to see how.

I like making things. I like giving presents, too. To family, friends or just people. What I like even more than making things and giving presents, is making presents which will give you a hard time. Loads of glitter, confetti and ugly photos are usualy involved.

With the upcoming birthday of my dad, I was thinking about what he would like. He likes a good Jack&Coke every now and then, so I wanted to give him a bottle of Jack Daniels, but just giving it would be way too easy ;) So I decided he would have to put a little more effort into getting his Jack&Coke than just staying alive for another year.

I designed a jail to fit the bottle of Jack Daniels, which can only be opened by removing the 132 nuts that keep the bottle locked up.

For one bottle jail I ordered online:

• two 12x12cm 3mm thick aluminum sheets
• 160 nuts (M6)
• 4m of threaded end (M6)

(I ordered everything double, so I could make another one and had spare parts if something didn't work out the way I wanted)

I also used:

• file tool
• a hacksaw
• a drill (6mm)
• a bottle Jack Daniels 0,7l (obviously)
• a ruler
• glue
• a lasercutter (optional)

The total costs of the materials (excluded the Jack Daniels) were around 25 Euro or 27 dollar.

First I placed the bottle and the nuts on the sheet to check how many prison bars I should make. I decided that 12 bars would be perfect. I drew twelve dots onto one aluminum sheet and drilled the holes. Then I put the other sheet under the already drilled sheet so the holes would match, and drilled again. They might not be in a perfect straight line, but since the upper and bottom sheet are aligned it should work just fine.

I filed the edges and the drilled holes to make sure all sharp edges were gone. Later on I also drilled a hole in the middle of the upper sheet, for the box that's covering everything up, but that's optional.

TL;DR: drill the desired amount of holes in the two sheets and sand or file the edges.

The threaded-end bars came in 1 meter parts, so I sawed them into 33 cm pieces and tried to put everything together. The nuts under the bottom sheet are glued, otherwise you could just spin those off and open the jail.

Optional: Using a laser cutter and the program Box designer (http://boxdesigner.connectionlab.org/) I made a box to put over the top, for a little extra challenge, and a little box as a bottom to prevent the nuts from scratching the table. I glued the boxes together and spray painted them black. The box on the bottom is glued to the bottom nuts to make sure everything stays in place.

Screw on all the nuts (Optional: put the box over it, screw on the last couple of nuts) and you're done!