Magnetic Bottle Opener With Wire Inlay
This came from a piece of black walnut that was given to me by my grandpa. He managed to save a chunk from an old tree they had (bark and all) and held onto it for a long time. I sent this back to him as a little surprise and thank you. I added the horseshoe because he's always been involved with horses, whether in rodeo, raising, or racing.
It has some character like the bug trail I left in the sapwood and the surface checks I filled. It's outfitted with some pretty intense magnets so no bottle cap will go uncaught. It can be mounted on a fridge or with the keyhole hanger for the wall. For the finish, I tried Arm R Seal for the first time.

Finished photo first. It was tough to photograph with the gloss finish, but you get the idea.

Resawing down to rough dimensions. I had just gotten my bandsaw so I was trying to figure things out.

There were a lot of little surface checks. I used medium-thick black Starbond Adhesives glue to fill them and it worked pretty well.

I put one coat of finish down on my show side to protect things and to prevent contamination for when I start flushing the inlay. First time using Arm-R-Seal and I really like it.

Getting the back ready for the magnets and the keyhole hanger

I made a horseshoe shape in Sketchup to make sure it would be symmetrical and the right size. I printed it out and then used carbon paper to transfer the shape to the wood

Here's my little homemade chisel. The goal is to part the fibers, not remove material for the flat wire.

In progress with the flat wire inset and working on the metal dots.

After I had filed and sanded the wire flush. There's a lot of metal debris created, hence the pre-finishing to try and keep it out of the wood pores.

Adding some round overs to the edges

More roundovers

A view of the back with the magnets. They're large and mean business.

On my fridge. I have a video of it catching caps, but no pictures. The lapse in photographs must have been cause by my excessive dedication to quality control testing to make sure it worked in a real life situation.