Bottle cap art. When I was…
Bottle cap art. When I was younger, twist-off caps were just starting to be seen but no skelsie player would ever be caught dead using one. They were too, light, tall, whatever. They just weren’t used. Crimp-crown caps were the cap of choice. If fact, caps with a cork liner were prefered to those with the new-fangled plastic liner. The cork liner had to be dug out with a can opener or screw driver. If you were good (lucky) the liner would come out in one piece. The cap was then delicatly balanced on the burner of your stove (I think I was in my twenties before I saw an electric stove) and heated. Various pieces of wax crayons (Crayola, anything else was crap) were then added and allowed to melt. The skill was in selecting and mixing the colors to arrive at an eyepleasing design, something like a spin-art picture. Crayon added near the end remained the most vivid but the best caps were made by letting the melted crayon boil and convex. The cap was then taken off the heat and floated in a shallow pan of water to set the design. If the cap sunk you were left with a 3-D wax sculpture, pretty to look at but not playable. About two thirds of the time the colors would just run together. The resulting cap would be fine for playing but not much to look at. Every once in a while, though, you’d get a real work of art.