Ram's Head Bottle Opener

I like blacksmithing because it allows you to change an otherwise fixed object into a claylike material you can shape at will. It is a craft most people have forgotten and an art that can make things no machine will ever be able to replicate. This project for instance – a bottle opener, which comes in a handful of designs and look nearly identical beyond a few cosmetic differences. But blacksmith the same object and it will be unlike any other, even if the design were the same. My design combined a conventional bottle opener with the end of an artistic fire poker, where you might see an animal head or curly tail. I chose a ram’s head. A fairly ambitious plan, which required researching techniques, required tools, and designs I might use as a reference.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/79f2b3_fc9f61a338714c9bb8aa77a8cb90b20e/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

I bought some half-inch, square stock rod and started to forge the head, to draw out the horns of the ram, and to give the head features such as eyes – all going well. Finally, I started to forge weld the head against what would become the bottle opener, a process of binding metal layers together through force of hammer and borax. But my forge weld didn’t hold. Cracks started to appear at the seam where the two layers meet, and I quickly learned why it’s considered such a difficult technique. This would have been a simple fix for a modern welder, but I didn’t have one, and so I had to send it in to a local metal shop. They didn’t take the job seriously, overcharged me, and did a subpar job tack welding it. I was frustrated and discouraged by this until I considered welding it myself. No, I didn’t have the equipment, but I’d learned how to weld in Boy Scouts. So when school was back in session, I took the project with me to college, where I asked the lab supervisor if I could use their welder to fix my project. It was approved and I welded the seem shut to my standards.

Happy with my work, I eventually brought it back home to forge the eyelet hole for the bottle opener on the other end, which would have completed the project. The half inch rod wasn’t thick enough though. It didn’t provide a thick enough band surrounding the hole and would be a weak point as a result. I decided to keep my hard fought progress on the half inch rod, but bought a one-inch square stock rod in addition, building a bigger version that might avoid some of the above mistakes. Once again, even on the one-inch rod, my forge weld didn’t hold. And I once again tacked it up myself with the welder at school. Thankfully the rest moved much smoother than the first time. With each step I would start on the smaller version and then learn from my mistakes before moving to the larger version. Soon enough it began to take shape. I had the ram’s horns cut and curled, the face was identifiable and taking shape, and the eyelet hole was punched and widened to make the bottle opener.

This project is currently still in the works, but is nearing completion. I will update the page once I have finished with a more thorough explanation of my process, my mistakes, and what I learned from them, as well as pictures of the final product.