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Mike Siemsen, owner of Mike Siemsen’s School of Woodworking in Chisago City, Minn., has finally resolved the mystery of the saw nib – you know – those little nipple-shaped protrusions on the blade of a handsaw that (until now) had no discernible use. (Go ahead – click the nipple link – I promise it’s SFW.)
Turns out, the nib is for opening bottles. (Yes, yes. I know that the crown bottle cap wasn’t invented until 1892, and that saw nibs have been around far longer – but never mind that.)
So, for uncovering this heretofore unknown use for the saw nib, Mike is the winner of our “Build a Woodworker’s Bottle Opener” contest, for which he wins a $100 shopping spree at WoodworkersBookShop.com.
Mike also sent us an entry made by his friend Steve Schwabacher, pictured below…and we think it’s kind of a dog. Or a kind of dog.
We also had a lot of other fun bottle openers submitted, and our thanks all of you who took the time to enter. Some of our other favorites are pictured below.
From Christopher Griggs: A hardware store block plane, an old kitchen cabinet hinge and some CA glue:
From Tim (who offers his apologies to James Krenov:)
From Tony Strupilis, who felt what the Nicholson Woodchuck rasp/chisel combo really needed to make it awesome was a fifth function:
From Aaron Moore, who made an opener with add-ons – attach the base unit to your drill press to open one beer, or add the “multi-opener” attachment to open three at a time!
From Niels Cosman, who’s Buck Brothers’ paint can opener (yes, it’s a chisel) now doubles as a bottle opener:
From Steve Schafer, whose plane blade opener still works as a plane blade:
And, last but not least (“least” is, of course, my non-working entry from the original post), Tom Collins, who clearly went to some trouble (and I think his bottle opener might also work to mash very small potatoes):
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
