CNC Project Ideas: Bottle Openers

For many years, and right up to the present I suspect, machinists in schools did a project to make a small ball peen hammer.  The Paulding Machinist’s Hammer is perhaps the ultimate expression of this art.

In this way, hammers can be a sort of blank canvas on which to express one’s aesthetics, much like 30’s automobiles let hot rodders express their art.  I collect photos on Pinterest of things that seem to me might make good CNC projects.  At this point, there are more than enough photos to keep me busy for the rest of my life making interesting things, but I suspect I will continue collecting photos for a long time.  Along the way I have noticed that CNC’d bottle openers are ripe as another blank canvas on which to express ourselves.  There are an amazing number of different types out there.  Here’s a photo collage of just a few of them:

It’s really neat to see all the variations.  There’s a bunch more on my “Guy Gear” page if this isn’t enough to get the creative juices flowing.  A bottle opener can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and they seem like they’d make excellent gifts.

One more thing.  If you’re still stuck on making that machinist’s hammer, consider the Paulding Hammer I linked to above which has interchangeable heads, and consider whether you might not want an attachment like to make it more like this:

After all, do you really need another durometer for tapping something in or in this case a claw for removing nails as much as you need a handy bottle opener?