Handcrafted Egg Breaker

I'm always fascinated by unique ways of doing things and that's what has inspired this instructable.

I love eggs, in all forms. While it requires a bit of delicate handling, breaking eggs is not the hardest chore you get to do while in the kitchen; still, I won't mind spending some extra sweat to make an "egg breaker".

As for my choice of material, metal is a no-no; I also don't have plastics that fit the form I need; big wooden planks would be chunky and heavy to work with, and as a student, I barely have enough hand tools not to talk about power tools. After a careful thought process, what could be better than regular popsicle sticks? Affordable, available, and easy to work with, for example, sawing/cutting (I use a small hand saw for that), punch holes (either with my screwdriver or boring the holes with the pointy tip of my hobbyist pen knife). It's also lightweight while being reasonably strong, at least more than enough for pulling eggshells apart.

To connect all the pieces of the egg breaker, I used bamboo skewers and held all the structures together with wood glue (PVA glue).

Popsicle sticks/Craft sticks

Bamboo skewers

Hand saw

Pen knife

Screwdriver

Pencil

Wood sandpaper

Scissors

Steel rule

Blade of Utility knife

Pliers

Wood glue

Resin glue

The egg breaker relies on a mechanism that is operated a bit similarly to scissors. Grab the two handles and push them together, but unlike scissors, pushing the handles together causes the mouth to open wide while a push mechanism in between the two handles at the same time moves forward through the push guide.

I've made most of the names of the parts of this tool up, and I've tried to keep them as self-explanatory as possible.

The tool consists of the following parts:

• The frames (top and bottom pairs): The two pairs encapsulate the other parts within and around them.

• The push mechanism: Structured to engage in a forward push when the two handles are pressed together.

• The push guide: Provides the point of rotation for the frames and also has a central gap, which receives and guides the push rod coming from the push mechanism.

• The remaining parts include the layers of wood in between the bottom and top frames, the egg holder under the mouth of the tool (it prevents the egg from falling right through the mouth), the "fangs" (because it pierces and pries the eggshell apart into two halves) made from cut part of the blade of a utility knife, the foam pads to accommodate for differences in the sizes of eggs and the rubber band hooks that accommodate the elastic bands that returns the mouth closed after opening.

I took a couple of popsicle sticks and with my ruler and pencil, I drew the shapes I'd cut out of it. For the sake of simplicity, I've made a template for the pieces needed and attached it to this step so you can easily cut out the pieces without much worry about measurements.

To cut the pieces, I used a hand saw. First position the hand saw on the line you want to cut along and gently pass it along to and fro until it makes a groove and then follow through till the saw cuts entirely through. It's very quick and does a neat job.

Each frame has seven pieces; arrange and glue them as shown in the pictures, three pieces below and four pieces on top; this way, it has more rigidity to it. When glueing the pieces for the left-hand side make sure to flip them over.

I made four of these frames. Two (right and left) for the bottom and two (right and left) for the top.

Attached to this step is the template for cutting the pieces needed to make the push guide. Two long pieces with curved ends (one of the ends was normally curved, but the other end was sanded by me, it has more aesthetics that way).

I made two holes each 1cm away from the ends of each piece.

Then I cut two smaller squares of sides 1.8cm (which is also the width of the popsicle sticks I'm using).

To assemble the guide, I glued the two smaller square pieces on one of the long pieces 1.9cm apart and 3cm away from the ends.

Then I glued the other long piece on top of it, making sure the holes of the two pieces aligned. I left it to dry.

The push mechanism primarily consists of two inclined arms that come from the handles and hold onto the push rod, which goes through the push guide.

Attached to this step is the template to cut the pieces needed for this step.

I cut the two arms out and sanded the ends to be curved, I bored holes into the two ends of each piece as I had marked in the template.

For the push rod, I've also included it in the template and the mark for its hole.

To arrange the pieces, one of the two arms goes under the push rod and at its base, two smaller pieces are arranged on top of it to accommodate the space between it and the top frame, the second arm goes above the push rod and at its base likewise, two smaller square pieces are arranged under it to accommodate the space between it and the bottom frame.

The push rod is inserted into the push guide and the pieces are fastened together and to the bottom frame through the holes on them with cut bamboo skewers.

As shown in the pictures, I have attached the top frame temporarily to the structure made so far and the gap between the top and bottom frame created by the presence of the push guide and push mechanism is obvious and needs to be filled while also making sure that movement of the push mechanism is not hampered.

For the gaps within the handles, I cut three pieces, each of length 4cm for each of the handles. The three pieces were glued on top of each other and then onto the bottom frame; the same was done for the other handle.

For the mouth part of the tool, for each side, I cut three pieces, each of length 8cm, glued on top of the other and onto the bottom frame. For the front-facing part of each side, three pieces each of length 4cm, also glued on the other and to the bottom frame.

In the case of any protrusion or one part being longer than the other, I made use of the saw and afterwards sanded the cut surface.

Additionally, I cut two 1.8cm square pieces made a hole at the centre of each and used them as stoppers to secure the central point of motion of the three parts of the push mechanism. After inserting the square pieces through the skewer, I applied super glue to bind them to the skewer while making sure the push mechanism rotates freely within the two stoppers.

This part as earlier stated in step 1, receives the weight of the egg.

I cut 24 pieces of 1.8cm by 1.8cm square popsicle wood. I glued 12 pieces together and another 12 pieces together separately. Then I glued each of them on a 5cm long piece shown in the picture. Left it to dry and then glued each under the bottom frames, one to each side and left the whole thing to dry hard.

I took the top frames, passed them through the skewers, and glued them on the layered pieces earlier glued to the bottom frames.

At this stage, we have made good progress, and holding the egg breaker by the handle and pressing it together pushes the push rod forward and opens the mouth wide apart (and that's it, nothing else). It should be able to sort of retract on its own and push the push rod back while the mouth closes; for this purpose, we will be making hooks for an elastic band on each side of the tool's mouth.

For this, I again cut two square pieces 1.8cm by 1.8cm in dimension and two smaller rectangular pieces 1.5cm by 1cm in dimension. I glued the smaller rectangles on the bigger squares at the midline towards one end as shown in the pictures. After the two pieces had dried, I then glued each of them to one side of the front-facing portion of the mouth at 3cm apart.

Flipping the egg breaker over, I cut a piece of popsicle 11cm in length and glued half of it to one side of the front-facing portion of the tool. This is to prevent one side of the egg breaker from dropping below the other as a result of unequal bearing of the weight of the egg.

After the hook piece had properly dried (you don't want it to snap off under the tension of the elastic band) I passed across it twice.

Of course, the aim is to break eggs, and for that, we'll need something sharp and pointy, like the blade of a utility knife. The entire blade would not be needed only a small section of it is what we need.

The blade is usually marked with equally spaced oblique grooves as points for breaking each section off. With a pair of pliers, I cut off two pieces of the blade, each two sections wide.

Here we'll be making use of the epoxy resin glue as it binds metal very strongly. I mixed the two tubes and glued the blades into place as shown in the pictures. Left it to dry properly.

DO NOT mistakenly glue any other part of the egg breaker with this glue as the glued pieces would rather break apart than for the glue to come off.

Next, I cut two pieces of foam and glued (a generous layer of wood glue) each on one side inside the mouth of the egg breaker. Each piece of foam was 3cm long, 2cm tall, and 2cm thick.

At this point, I cut all the protruding bamboo skewers and applied glue onto the top and bottom frames and the skewers.

I left the egg breaker for about 24 hours for all the glued parts to dry hard, and after that, I cleaned all the rough edges with sandpaper and sawed all parts to be equal. Then I tested the mechanism by repeatedly opening the mouth while the elastic band kept closing it back.

It worked fine!

As shown in the first gif image, take the egg and position it centrally in the mouth of the egg breaker (equal lengths of the egg to both sides of the fangs and push rod) then push the egg down into the mouth such that it rests on the egg holder, that way, the fangs and push rod are touching the centre of the egg's belly and on pushing the two handles together as seen in the second gif image the push rod pushes the fangs into the eggshell and simultaneously opens the shell apart and the egg yolk and white drops into the plate below. Turn the egg breaker over and shake it to drop the shell out.

Pretty cool if you ask me.