Shot Glass Holder

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Intro: Shot Glass Holder

My final (for the moment) bullet/shell/ordanance based "ible" The shot glass set

I made one of these to give to our host ship during RIMPAC in 2012, however they were very popular and I ended up making 39!!

I was VERY fed up of doing them by then

Again apologies as I havent got a full set of pics, unfortunately the rest of the pics are still on my camera which is lying in about 2000ft of water somewhere off Vanuatu!! Don't ask I was hugely p****d off when it fell out of my pocket!

STEP 1: The Shell

I started off with one of our 5" shell casings, these are stainless steel although painted green

STEP 2: Remove Primer

I took the primer out (I had to make a tool for that as nothing was available)

I then cut the primer down to about 5" long

STEP 3: Cutting the Shell

I had to cut the shell by hand as it was too long to go in the lathe onboard, stainlees is pretty tough, and it was about this time that I missed the old brass shells!!

I put masking tape around to give me a line and also protect the surface that I wanted to polish

STEP 4: The Base (and This Is Where the Pics Run Out!)

The base is about 2' deep, I screwed the primer back in the wrong way around so that I could mount this in the lathe to clean the cut edge and polish the inside ( I used scotchbrite and water to remove the burnt residues, then cardboard and metal polish to get a shine)

I then reversed the primer so I could polish the outside

STEP 5: The Final Object

Once polished, I cut a piece of 12mm ply to insert in the aperture to hold the shot glasses, I cut 7 holes (centre for primer and 6 for shots) and sanded and stain/varnised it.

The shots themselves are made from cut down 20mm CIWS shells (brass) and polished and hold 100ml each.

I also used an upended 50cal (1/2 inch round) in the top of the primer as a handle as it was a snug fit in the primer (I also put a roll pin through it as you don't want it coming off as it would make a hell of a dent in the table!!) and a bit of knotwork to tidy the whole thing up.

I also hand engraved the outside (name, ship etc, I printed this out, stuck the paper on and engraved through)

And there it is

Hope you like it

4 Comments

those are super cool...wow. The dedication to muscle through all that steel cutting is impressive!

Thanks, everyone who got one was pleased with it, but I don't think I'll ever make anymore

So what did you use in place of the primer on the 20 mm shells to seal up the bottom?

The 20mm were expended ordanance (we use them on the CIWS (like a robot gatling gun)), primers are left in as they are similar to normal bullet primers, so not obtrusive, The inside of the 20mms was polished using scotchbrite on a dowel with metal polish, however the alcohol in the shots will eventually dissolve any remaining cordite ---and put hairs on your chest!!! (maybe not so good if you are a girl!) BTW CIWS stands for close in weapon system (it shoots down missiles) we use conventional ammo however the US/UK use depleted uranium --I wouldn't recommend usin US/UK casings unless your next words want to be HULK--SMASH!!