Silk purse, sow's ear

Some of you will have already seen this on Facebook... Sorry!

I've been trying to engrave more objects and fewer practice plates - practice plates are great, but it's a different set of challenges to doing layout & engraving on a finished object. So...

Inexpensive aluminium bottle openers. I can't over-emphasise how unpleasant this stuff is to engrave; it's gritty, gummy, varying in hardness, the graver wants to dive at inopportune moments - fun all round.

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Plaitwork for the next one I think (although I've seen some skull borders that might be entertaining to try).

They look fabulous though Peter - I know a lot of people who'd be happy to have one!

I've got some golf club filling paint samples that I'm tempted to try using on these - I've got the usual black, along with white, bright yellow and bright pink. Not sure if the flower pattern would work with the bright colours or if I'd still need black for the central shading.

I think the colours would work, sorry meant to comment when I first saw them.When I saw them on fb I didn’t pick up the bottle opener immediately, they would make good key holders as well

They look good , brings back bad memories about 3 years ago a mate asked me to cut some for him on my bandsaw you could buy the extrusion in 6 metre lengths, I still find aluminium chips around the work shop, they were to promote his new business ( he had them LASER engraved) which never happened, he has them all in his shed.

Very nice Peter, I've attempted these boarder patterns myself and I can understand what you are saying about practice plates, as you say they have their place but an actual piece concentrates the mind much more. You can't beat a good skull 💀:D

And another one...

Not a border pattern this time, which makes a difference. Instead of the cut both defining the shape and removing the background, this requires a separate pass of background removal too.

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I really like the Celtic knot type patterns and I think it suits the opener keyring really well. Thumbs up from me:Y:

I was toying with shading the crossovers as well, but in the end decided against it. It would give more dimension to the pattern though... Perhaps next time.

These are really beautiful and I love the idea! Thanks for sharing. I might have to give some bottle openers a try myself :)