I'd like to think of myself as the gentleman's Colin Furze.
Over Christmas I opened an old bottle of port. The procedure is complicated enough in that you have to stand it upright a week before you open it to let the sediment settle to the bottom of the bottle. There's a lead foil, a paper seal, a wax plug and then the cork. I did manage to draw the cork but it was degraded and quite a lot of it crumbled into the wine.
The way to open a bottle like this is with port tongs. You grab the neck of the bottle with red hot tongs and then shock it with a cloth soaked in ice cold water. The neck of the bottle should snap off with the cork intact.
I'm too tight to spend a hundred pounds on a tool for opening wine very occasionally, so I have started making my own. Working the jaws and cutting and bending the tongs is nearly done, but I need someone to help with the welding. I normally use silver solder for joining metal, but as these need to withstand red heat that's not going to work.
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