Home Forums Gear Free Classifieds Hand forged original wrought iron bottle openers

A manly bottle opener! Hand forged from 100 year old original wrought iron that was salvaged from a cemetery fence which was being replaced. Imagine the spirits and souls this fence was witness to over the last 100yrs! My supply of this 100 year old wrought iron is limited and I only have so much of it. When it runs out I have no more. These are not made from modern steel, these are not made from simple flat bar stock. All forged by hand, no machines involved. Just me with my anvil and forge.

The bottle opener features a nicely tapered handle and an elegant arch that fits the hand nicely. Overall length is ballpark 5.5", and a leather lanyard is installed on the end of the opener for easy hanging, or just to have that rustic look. The bottle openers pictured are an example, due to the process of hand forged items it might be slightly different but very close to what you see. Each opener has a bit of its own character, no two come out exactly the same but very close.

The bottle opener proudly carries the "Black Frog Ironworks" logo, the frog skeleton stamp. You can choose from two or three different finishes. A blackened oil finish burned into the metal, just like seasoning an old cast iron pan for a rustic, old wrought iron look. Or you can have a wire brushed satin steel finish for a more modern and industrial look, and I can add some flame tempered coloring if you want. There is the possibility for adding some custom stamping characters into your opener, like initials, date, name, etc...Contact me for personalization options before ordering.

Shipped to your door, $60.

Here's an example of the black finish:


Here's one of the flame colored ones, of course this varies on each a bit. Some lighter, some darker:


This shows the original wrought iron fencing piece on the left, and a couple openers in process:


Another step in forging the openers:

That is too cool! I'll take one, black with flame tempered coloring please.

Eric

PM sent Eric! Thanks!

Just to be clear from what Eric mentioned, there is either the black finish which is really BLACK like the first pic, or brushed silver (all one silver color), or the flame coloring on top of the silver finish. When trying to do the flame finish, some turn out with darker colors, some turn out lighter. You never quite know how it will turn out. I'm guessing sort of like trying to predict the case-hardened colors on some rifles/shotguns. Some different (or better?) than others.

Here's one I did this week that came out lighter:

Tag for a very cool product!

That is pretty cool!

Todd sent an email pictorial of all the work that goes into making one of these. It's a great value and a cool product. I'll post some pics when I get mine. I'm going flame coloring.

Eric

Thanks! Sold lots of these as Christmas presents, hand-made and personalized with dates/names etc. It is cool knowing that these bottle openers that I make from a very old cemetery fence will be around way longer than I will.

The last guy who bought one on another site wrote me a note back after receiving it saying, "...this thing is bad-ass!".

It never occurred to me to post them for sale here in the classifieds until today. Now that EricM will have one made up and personalized for him this weekend, once he receives it I hope he will leave an honest impression (good or bad) of what he thinks of it here. If I get it done and sent out by Monday, EricM might have it in his hands for the following weekend.

Your my hero.. It's #$%@ nice to see something that isn't [bleep] out of a CNC for a change... This will make you a few friends!

PM inbound

W

Todd, you bet. I'll leave a review with my impressions once I receive it. Happy Holidays!

Eric

I get questions about the wrought iron used.

Original wrought iron is very different than modern steel.
It was low carbon content and had lots of impurities compared to modern steel of today.

Wrougt iron was the common material for most anything made out of metal up to the late 1800's into the early 1900's.
It is fibrous, it has a pronounced grain to it similar to wood.
And like wood, it can split.

About 20% of the openers I'm making with this wrought iron, the eye will split out on my during the forging process from the grain splitting. That is a couple hours wasted, and it gets thrown onto the reject pile.

But wrought iron is very cool, can't find it anymore today so I try to salvage it where I can.
It has a different feel to it compared to steel.

This is the grain and fibers of W.I.:


And this is what happens every so often while forging these openers.
booooooooo..... When this happens, it causes bad words to be uttered.

I'll take a flame one here please! The lighter color if possible.

Tom

Me too

PM sent

all PM's responded to.
Wow, I did not expect this sort of response! I thought maybe some guys here would like and appreciate something hand made and personalized from the old world method of forging, but this makes me quite happy to know people appreciate things like this.

Sometimes when people see my openers and love them, they are shocked when I tell them what I charge for them.

"... for a simple bottle opener?!?"

I just smile and tell them that I have a GREAT deal for them today! I will sell them a do-it-yourself kit for the low, low price of $5. And then I hand them a 7" piece of rusty metal. If you can do better for cheaper, I'm all ready to sit, watch, and learn.

I'm not gettin' rich off these, I probably have 4+ hours into each one before sending them out, plus the fuel for the forge, plus buying the leather chords, plus buying the wrought iron from the salvage place. I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy other people really loving the items I make. Forging makes me happy, I love making something from nothing by pounding red hot metal. I think I was born a couple hundred years too late....

I'll take a black one. Please send me a pm with payment instructions. Thanks

Lee

Ebby, PM sent!

And by the way, lot of times today you will see the term "wrought iron" used quite incorrectly. Like you see a trellis at the garden store, or some modern metal table being labeled as wrought iron. That is pure marketing B.S.

Real wrought iron hasn't been made in the U.S. for close to 100yrs. You cannot find it anywhere, but I think there may be one outfit in the U.K. that still might make real wrought iron at a very expensive price.

Anything that is newer and labeled "wrought iron" is simply modern steel that has been forged in a old-world sort of look. Like scrolls or other ironwork, that is plain steel. I use steel for most things and that is fine, but it is not the old school stuff.

Unless it is around 100 years old or older, it ain't real wrought iron!
When you learn to look and find it, there is some to still be found, but it is getting harder and harder to find.

Wait till Big Stick gets word of these, you'll be booked for years to come!!

Pocket pouch or Kydex??

I'm in! Flame color please. This is way cool! Thank you for your time and history lesson. PM sent. Gary

Any chance of getting a.customized fire place fire poker?

Maaax, sent you a PM.


Nope, not from me at least.
I work with metal, I'm no leather artist, nor even would know the first thing about doing that! Not a bad idea, but most people want them for their bar/den/RV/etc and aren't carrying them around too much. You are the first to ask that!


I've done several for people. My favorite ones are the reverse twists in a little bit of random pattern, sort of like this one. I don't like the round eye handle of this one, but that is what the person wanted. I do a different more ergonomic handle on most, but I don't have pics of those. I wasn't smart enough to snap any pics of them.... Of course fire pokers can have the same stamps of year, or name, or initials on it too.

I've been offering an email pictorial to people that are interested, and have been getting lots or requests for it! So rather than keep forwarding the same email, I'll post it right here in this thread so everyone can see what goes into making these.

This should give you a good idea on the progression of your opener from start to finish. Sorry that some of the pictures are a little blurry, I was trying to snap them quickly as I was working. And for some reason I�m finding that the auto-focus does not work well while trying to zero in on red-hot metal.

I�m not sure how familiar you are with forging, but each cycle of a piece coming out of the forge while hot and then doing work on it before it cools too much is called a �heat�.

The first step is to cut a length of about 6.25� of the �� x �� wrought iron fence picket. It took me many variations and attempts to figure out that length of metal for the opener to have final proportions I wanted and the finished length of ballpark 5.5� to be correct. I�ll include a cutoff scrap of the original wrought iron so you could see what your opener originally came from.

Since the opener�s thick end is much larger than the original �� square metal, we need to have more metal on one end. This is accomplished by �upsetting� the material length wise. I hammer length wise on the end of the rod to compact it down. The hotter the metal, the easier it moves. So by heating up one end more than the other, I can create a thick taper for the whole length.

Hammering length-wise on a red hot rod like that is sort of like trying to hammer a wet noodle, the middle wants to bend off to the sides rather than be compressed in-line. So it requires constant straightening as the upsetting process goes along. Many heats are required to do this.

That 6.25 rod gets smushed down to 4.25�. Here�s the original rod on the left, and two pieces after upsetting:


Next step is to bevel the thick end of the opener. This needs to be done now because if you try to do this after the eye end of the opener is in place, that fragile rim will get all bent and distorted. Bevel the four major sides, then on the corners too:


Then partition off the end ball of the opener.
How much to partition off is whatever you want for a ball size:


Beveling the ball end partition, and also beveling the side corners of the ball end:


Start evening out the taper of the body, and also beveling the corners of the body:


Once the body if roughly shaped, then prepare the eye end for size and thickness:


This can be the tricky part, slitting the hole in the body. If you screw this up bad, there is no fixing it. Start over.

This is fairly easy to do in thin metal, but we are working with some fairly beefy thickness here. A slitting punch is hammered in almost all the way through from one side. Then the piece is turned over and the slitting punch must be precisely lined up with the slot coming from the other side. Problem is you can�t see exactly where that slot is from the blind side�

If it all works correctly, you end up with a nice slotted hole. And you also end up with a nice and neat little slug of metal which you see laying on the anvil to the left:
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