My first bottle stopper

[Brian Effinger]

Just wanted to post my first wine bottle stopper. I made this as practice because my SIL wants me to make one for her to give to her boss (my first commission ever :D ). The stopper is the 316 stainless steel one from Arizona Silhouette and the blank is from there too. I drilled and tapped the blank for mounting on AS's mandrel, and set it up in my Nova chuck. I turned and then wet sanded 220 to 600 and then switched over to MM to 12000. I then polished it with Novus plastic polish.

It turned out OK, but there are a few things I need to do to make the next one perfect. When I finished it in my basement shop, it looked great, but as soon as I brought it upstairs into the daylight, I could see some very fine scratches were still there. I tried to remove it from the metal, but the threads came with the blank, so I can't re-chuck it to sand a little more. If I had buffing supplies, I could probably buff them out. The other thing I noticed was there was a slight gap between the blank and the stopper on one side. My DP must have been slightly out of square to the blank. It is very slight - I couldn't even stick a sheet of paper in, but it still bugs me.

Any comments, critiques or suggestions are always welcome :)

Brian

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Brian....Great first bottle stopper!

That's the thing I like about acrylics. The Beal buffing system I use removes all of the scratches so they have a glass like finish. Well done sir! I like that blank and the form!

[Steve Schlumpf]

Brian - very nice bottle stopper! Love the shape and color of your blank! SIL must be very happy with your work!

[Bernie Weishapl]

That is a great first stopper. Love the shape. You did a nice job on it.

[Brian Effinger]

Thanks for the comments :) I did see my SIL today, so I let her take a look at the prototype, and she liked it. Now I just have to make the stopper for her. I'll post that when I make it (maybe tomorrow or Tuesday). Wish me luck.