Koozie for Beer Swap

 

Migrated project.

My first swap ended up being the beer swap. Why? Because the people I work for also own a brewery, so why not. I made this for ksSlim.
I got the idea of a wooden koozie from a project by LJ doubleDD. I asked him a lot of questions and he graciously helped me out. But I didn't have a lathe or any turning experience.

I had some walnut that I glued up and contacted my buddy LJ Putty who does have a lathe. So he helped me greatly and taught me a lot.

This is me:

And here's Putty:

We made 2 since we weren't sure how they would work out. The first one is simple in shape but worked, so we got a little fancier with the second one and made it more of a barrel shape.

After that I went to visit my son who makes guitars in 1/2 of a one car garage.

He had some box elder burl which we used to make scales for a stainless bottle opener.

I had made a 1" wide groove around the center of the koozies to receive a 1" wide strip of leather with LJ Beer Swap 2017 stamped on it. However the leather I had on hand was too thick so I sanded it…for a long time until inspiration set in. I set my little 220 block for a really aggressive cut and learned that you can in fact plane leather.

I stamped the leather and glued it on and started putting polyurethane on everything. I put a small strip of neoprene around the upper inside to keep a bottle from rattling around. Dave (doubleDD) used foam weather striping which I think would have been better than the neoprene. But it is just applied with spray adhesive, so it can easily be changed.

I got the beers from the brewery and the Head Brewer at Whistle Post Brewery which is no longer operating. He also bottled 2 more for me that were not currently being bottled. So I printed up some lables for those two from images on the website.

I want to especially thank Putty for his invaluable help.

Thanks for looking