Bottle openers are classic blacksmithing projects that teach a variety of extremely useful forging skills. This Instructable is a comprehensive tutorial detailing every step needed to forge my original design of a stylized skeleton bottle opener. Anyone attempting this is more than welcome to make different artistic choices as well! These can be also used as merely guidelines.

This Instructable will be very detailed and thorough! At any point, feel free to skip explanations if you don't need them. The idea is just to be as comprehensive as possible.

I will show all the necessary tools and explain important geometry. If there is interest, I may make a dedicated Instructable or Instructables on forging various punches, chisels, fullers, or any of the tools.

It's worth noting that there is a non-trivial number of tools involved in this project, but do not fear! Once you have an anvil, forge, and hammer, everything in this is relatively simple to make or buy. This Instrucable also assumes a little bit of familiarity with swinging a hammer, heating metal, etc., but should hopefully be pretty accessible to most beginners.

If you don't have an anvil with a horn and hardy hole, there will be a bonus bottle opener at the end using only the face of the anvil, a hammer, forge, and one fuller.

I've illustrated some graphics throughout that I hope will be useful. Feel free to save them if you'd like! You should be able to download them below.

About me:

Hello! My name is Tristan Antonsen, and I'm a student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois. I've had had a lifelong love of making things, which led me to blacksmithing a couple years ago. Since then, I've been blacksmithing along with school and am building up my workshop and business, Antonsen Forge. If this instructable interests you, you might like my other Instructables, particularly one where I documented my very first hand-forged Damascus steel knife.