Bottle Opener Day #1

Faced with the challenge to build a better bottle opener, my partner and I immediately gravitated toward an animal theme.  We performed a few internet searches to get our creative juices flowing, examined and measured a bottle cap, and decided to create a claw-shaped variety of bottle opener.  We proceeded to brainstorm, and after discussing and sketching such possibilities as a brontosaurus, a hippo, and a snake sporting a sombrero, we decided to pursue a festive reindeer and a patriotic eagle.  We spent time sketching our bottle openers, then moved on to the foam board.

Preliminary sketches

I was responsible for sketching and cutting out the reindeer, and one of my main concerns was making sure the antlers would be thick enough to withstand the force of opening a bottle without cracking or chipping.  We of course won’t know until we print out our first attempt, but when we held both of our models up to the bottles, they appeared to hit the caps in the right places.

Demonstrating the dual-opening capabilities of the reindeer bottle opene

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In addition to being able to potentially open two bottles at the same time, we thought an advantage of the antlered opener was that even if one antler broke, the bottle opener would still be functional.

Note: Although being able to open two bottles at once would be wonderful in theory, since the material we will be using is not extremely strong and our opener won’t be mounted to a wall, we will likely only be able to open one bottle at a time because we will need the extra leverage—but who knows!

Demonstrating the eagle bottle opener—stylish, comfortable, and patriotic!

With both of our models.  Will they be successful? Only time will tell . . .