(un)SCIENTIFIC MATERIALS ANALYSIS

Many months ago I noticed I was having an unsettling issue within my day to day life. My trusty SSWC08 bottle opener was becoming difficult to use in an efficient manner.

Upon further investigation, I noticed that the beveled edge that lifts the bottle cap off the collar and over the lip had worn down from use, thus limiting it's ability to allow me to gain access to the orifice.

Diagram #1: The morphology of a beer bottle explained to avoid any confusion

The results of years of use and alcohol abuse.

Conclusion: Aluminum is a great lightweight material for those who want high performance but can deal with a limited useful lifespan. Granted, this bottle opener was the "go-to" that hung from a hook inches from the refrigerator door seeing more use over the past few years than any other openers in the house. Still disappointing. I expected more from this free hunk of aluminum.

I moved my Paragon titanium bottle opener to the hook in the kitchen once I realized the aluminum one's days were numbered.

This opener was gifted to me by a generous friend who was trying to get me to switch teams with him at the time. It has seen plenty of use and shows absolutely no signs of wear at all. It is everything that titanium has to offer; rust proof finish, comfortable compliance, magical aura, a feeling that you're better than everybody else. It's like sex in your hand.

Conclusion: Ti is great and will last a lifetime, but it's best when you can get someone to give it to you rather than paying full pop. I'm pretty sure it makes my beer taste better.

Hanging next to my computer on my workbench is this tooltastic beast, the BO-1:

Which has now been replaced in the Park Tool line up with the B0-2... whatever.

It's made of steel, and as we all know "steel is real." This thing is a workhorse, and being that it's in the bike room, it gets treated harshly yet still continues to perform. Simple, elegant, heavy, and romanticized to no end.

Conclusion: It does everything the ti version does at a third the price, it just weighs more and has a cool colorway. Don't expect to find this cheap piece of plastic coated stamped steel in your family dentist's bike room. He's got ti... probably a few different ones at that.

In all fairness, I wanted to test a bottle opener made out of crabon fibre. Lacking one, I looked around for the next best thing.

A piece of steer tube from my Niner crabon frok.

Luckily I went to college, so I know the lighter trick (and how to flick bottle caps across the room), so I was able to open a beer quite handily with this device.

When I finished opening the beer, my crabon opener was slightly damaged. I lost my grip as I went to put it back on the workbench, and it fell to the ground shattering into seven pieces. I'm pretty sure this is a warranty issue. For the few moments that it was working, I did feel like I was at the forefront of technology, and I had a slight feeling of superiority over those codgers who cling to their cherished, outdated titanium openers in a cult-like fashion.

Conclusion: Carbon fiber shows great amounts of wear and tear after only one use and is highly fragile. Fortunately China is producing it at such a prolific rate that its disposability is not a factor. Buy, use, break, warranty... repeat as often as necessary.

Overall Conclusion: Bike frames... errrr... ummmm... bottle openers should be made out of McDonald's french fries. They're lightweight, cheap, and the last forever.



For those of you without the means or connections to obtain the openers that were tested (or any others that might have been beschwaggened unto you), might I suggest 100 other ways to open a beer with things like lawn furniture, a CD, and your friend's head.







All facts stated in the above post are not true, except the ones that are, but there's only something like two of those.