Bottle Openers Made From 16D Common Nails

This is a collection of bottle openers that I made from 16D common nails.  Some of them work better than others but I tried to incorporate a variety of designs.  The plaque hangs on a wall and the bottle openers (nails) are held in place by magnets (neodymium magnets from hard drives) installed in cutouts in the back of the plaque.  The YouTube video embedded above shows each of the openers in action.

Here is the basic process that was used for each of the bottle openers. My son Derek (age 9) did all of the hammering for the pictures shown below. (I worked the torch and held the nail with the pliers)  The Anvil in the pictures is also Derek’s.  I have a chunk of railroad track but Derek wanted the anvil shape so he asked for an anvil for Christmas last year.  He thanked his Grandpa for the anvil before opening it (the weight gave it away).

Start with a nail (16D common):

Heat the nail up, in the area to be bent, with a Propane torch:

Hammer the nail (or bend with pliers) to achieve the desired bend and repeat as required:

The nail can also be flattened to achieve additional features.  Derek has even flattened nails and added a twist for decoration:

In the picture below the shape of the opener is complete:

To increase the strength of the nail we heat it up and quench the nail in a cup of water.  This is needed to varying extents depending on the design of the bottle opener.

That completes one bottle opener. Time to put it to use:

The embedded video above shows closer views of the other bottle openers and includes video of each design opening a bottle.