This shape-shifting watch can help you crack open a cold one

 July 10, 2024

This shape-shifting watch can help you crack open a cold one

The world has bottle-opener sneakers, phone cases, and baseball caps. Now it’s getting a bottle-opening watch.

BY Jesus Diaz

The bottle opener is one of humanity’s most physics-defying pieces of ingenuity. It is so useful a tool that it has been incorporated into a mind-boggling array of products including sneakers, phone cases, flip-flops, seatbelt clips, belt buckles, tumblers, baseball caps, even swim trunks.

Now, Hong Kong watch designer Raskh is claiming that he has created the world’s first watch with a built-in bottle opener, called the Leverage. The Leverage is not, in fact, the first watch-bottle opener hybrid—that would be this horror, which technically only incorporates a bottle opener into the watch’s wristband. But Raskh managed to put the opener on the actual timepiece by using a clever built-in mechanism.The patented Lever-ge’s case design is a thing of wonder. The 0.54-inch-thick, 1.73-inch-wide machined solid aluminum body is made of two separate bodies that are held together by a mechanical lock. The inner-case body contains the movement—an automatic Miyota 8217, made in Japan. Meanwhile, the 1.3-inch-wide watch face has a clean, classic design available in black and white with luminescent hands and hour markers. The inner case sits perfectly inside the outer case thanks to a bolt that fits into a rectangular hole with rounded corners.

In its normal position, the watch looks like any other sports watch. But when you rotate the octagonal crown placed at its 8 o’clock position, you unlock a mechanism that will push the inner-case body out, leaving a hole on the backside of the watch that works as a bottle opener. Once the bottle cap is popped, you can snap the watch face and case back together and lock it in place. According to Raskh, the Leverage will be water-resistant to 164 feet because . . . you never know when you’ll need a Corona while underwater.

The watch is not available yet—it’s a Kickstarter project. I know July 4th is over, but we have the entire summer ahead. So don’t ask what the country can do for you! Ask how many bottles you can open with this watch once you lose your bottle-opening sneakers, phone cases, flip-flops, seatbelt clips, belt buckles, tumblers, baseball caps, and swim trunks. Let’s make magic happen.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jesus Diaz is a screenwriter and producer whose latest work includes the mini-documentary series Control Z: The Future to Undo, the futurist daily Novaceno, and the book The Secrets of Lego House. 


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