Do It Yourself

Drake’s DIY: Bottle Cap Coasters

Every once in a while, we drink beer and daydream about all the cool projects we could be doing. We think we could better our lives, our homes and our brewery by creating some DIY-inspired things. We usually ignore these urges, but in the spirit of Earth Day, we’re inspired! Here’s the first of a hot new series we’re calling “Drake’s DIY,” where we show you how you can turn stuff that might otherwise get sent to the landfill into nominally useful things.

We’re starting off with a pretty simple project where you can make heavy duty coasters using bottle caps and old jar lids:

You Will Need:
4 Wide Mouth Jar Lids
Bottle Caps (7 per lid)
Quick-set Epoxy
Cork Sheet
Glue/Adhesive
Xacto or Craft Knife

Optional:
Blow torch (do not operate while drinking!)

 

Step 1:
Drink beer! You need bottle caps. Lots of them. So get to it. Step 1 also happens to be our favorite part of the process. Don’t get distracted and forget to keep your bottle caps, you’ll need them later. Also, you want them to be as flat as possible, so open your bottles gently and preferably not with your teeth.

Step 2:
Get your jar lids and arrange your bottle caps inside in whatever pattern makes you happy. You can make them all one color, create flowers or rep your team colors. Entirely up to you. There’s only one thing you HAVE to do and that’s make sure that the two pieces of the jar lid make a water-right seal. One of our lids wasn’t and we got epoxy ERRWHERE. Like, all over the kitchen. So learn from us and avoid that.

Step 3:
Prepare your epoxy resin exactly according to the directions on the box. We’re not even going to pretend we know more than the instructions on the box. Don’t $%&@ this step up, it’s the most important. This stuff is gnarly and is capable of gluing shit to anything.

Step 4:
Slowly pour the resin into jar lids evenly. Be careful not to let it overflow (this stuff is clear and a little difficult to see if you happen to be drinking and you aren’t looking very closely…)

Step 5:
Use a needle or Xacto knife to pop the tiny bubbles as they appear. You will probably be like us and have millions of tiny bubbles on your first try but that’s ok. Most likely because we continued collecting more bottle caps throughout the process, which made it fun but we’re not perfect. This is where the optional blow torch comes in. The internets tell us that applying a small amount of intense heat will lift all the bubbles to the top so they can be more easily popped, but we also didn’t try this so don’t trust us.

Step 6:
Place the coasters somewhere they won’t be disturbed or get any dust or hair or bugs on them. Your kitchen floor is not ideal. This shit needs to dry and you don’t want to permanently have weird things all up in your coaster like that mosquito in Jurassic Park that Richard Attenborough used to make dinosaurs. Or maybe you do…

Step 7:
The hard part: wait. And wait some more. It’s at least as boring as watching paint dry, so crack another beer or go get some tacos. Most epoxy resin needs 24-72 hours minimum before it is set and ready to use. It can be forever, so don’t get impatient.

Step 8:
The whole point is keep your grandma’s heirloom coffee table from getting banged up, so let’s add a thin layer of cork to the bottom. Grab your sheet of cork board and trace the lids onto it with a pencil. Use an Xacto knife (or scissors) to gently cut out a perfect circle. Use Gorilla Glue or other adhesive to attach the cork to the bottom. Give it an hour or so and voila! You’ve made something.

Step 9:
Crack open a beer and place onto your new coaster. Step 9 was our favorite of the entire process.
And that’s all folks! Tag us in your DIYs with #DrakesDIY. We want to see how much better you are at this than we are!