When every young man (or woman!) turns the ripe old age of 21, certain lifestyle changes occur. The first, and probably most criticized is the change in priorities as to what we purchase. I am of course referring to the plethora of alcoholic beverages that are available to us. However one accessory seems to long to forgotten until it is needed most. The bottle opener. While most people flock towards the boring, stock bottle openers, my brother and I desire a bit more flair and character. It is with that idea that he came to me with the proposition, make me a bottle opener that incorporates an eagle, the mascot of his alma mater, Boston College.
The Boston College mascot, Baldwin, shown in the school colors, Maroon and Gold.
Being a student at Boston University, a life long rival of BC, I was skeptcial at first but jumped at the chance to stretch my engineering legs and got to work.
The first challenge was deiciding how to incorporate the eagle into a bottle opener. Very early concepts involved simply adding the oval ring like bottole opener to the back of the eagle, or have it jut out from the top of the wings. I deemed this a cop out, and knew I could find a more clever way of making this eagle pop (bottles that is!).
My next design iteration involved using the eagles beak and talons as the opening mechanism, but I did not want to sacrifice the overall look of the eagle too much, and using the beak would have involved changing the gemoetry of the beak and talons too much.
The next and final design iteration involves the eagles tail and it's left wing. By changing the geometry of the tail slightly, adding a tab to the end of it as well as altering the angle between the tail and the wing, I was able to create a very good lever mechanism, using the newly added tail "hook" to grab the edge of the bottle top and utilizing the wing as a lever to pull the top off.
As you can see I have maintained almost all of the original gemoetries of the eagle. The only changes were made to the tail and the left wing. The tail was extended slightly as well as a small lip was added on the end to provide a contact point for the bottle cap. The outline of the wing was widened slightly as to provide better contact points for the bottle cap. Although not visible above, a hole was made in the top left corner of the left wing for a key ring.
