Hacker News Reader

Comment by brashrat | Hacker News Reader

pro-tip: I've seen demonstrated, if you repeatedly whack the bottom of a bottle of wine with the heel of your shoe (or, in a similar manner, smack the bottom of a bottle of wine against a tree trunk) the cork will slowly emerge on its own.

It occurs to me if you get it wrong, glass shards from the bottle could emerge before submerging into your flesh, so perform this trick at your own risk.

View on HN

I've seen a variant of this attempted.

One of my colleagues put a wine bottle into a shoe, so the base of the bottle was resting where your heel would go. Then repeatedly 'tapped' the bottle/shoe combination heel first against the wall. Apparently hoping the hydraulic rebound would cause the cork to back out.

The bottle smashed. The concrete wall was permanently stained, the shoe was ruined and the carpet needed to be cleaned.

Very entertaining, but not terribly useful.

PLEASE don't do this. A friend of mine had done it a few times and was getting confident in the process. Once I was watching him, the bottle broke into tiny pieces and went straight into his hand. He had around 30 pieces of shattered glass that managed their back several centimeters deep inside. I still remember calling emergency and waving hands when they arrived so that they saw us. My friend came back a few days after with his hand wrapped in band after a pretty awful night in hospital. Pretty stupid idea if you ask me. Don't do it. Remember one hand is one half of your text editor...

Have you ever tried to break a wine bottle? They're pretty sturdy. This is actually not very difficult to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZZVIyVeQI

Although, I would think borrowing a wine opener from reception would've been the easiest approach in this case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com