My bookclub just finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Andre Dumas which we did over the course of nearly a year reading 100 page or so chunks about once a month the book being pretty long running to 1200+ pages depending on the translation. We had a get together to celebrate and I decided I wanted to make something to give to people as a token to commemorate the achievement.
I decided to make a key chain / fob and go for a fairly simple design with some text on the one side and a quote from the book on the other. To spice things up a little I got a bag of highest quality amazon basic emeralds (made from highest quality acrylic :D) to add to the fob. The book has a piece about the count hollowing out a massive emerald to use as a pill holder so it fits in with the theming and looks pretty good too.
I spent some time working up a design in inkscape trying working out how big a hole to use to allow the gem to fit inside. Once I’d gotten that perfected and had the text to my liking I began cutting and etching the first side of the piece.
I used some hardwood I had not completely sure what it is perhaps cherry but I’m not 100% sure. I locked it in place on the bed with lots of magnets and then once the first side was done I gently removed all the pieces and then put them back in the other way up to etch the quote on the reverse side using the remaining part of the wood as an alignment jig.
I made my design with the reverse side including the same cut pattern with the quote aligned to that and then I could use that to align it with the previous sides design then set it to ignore and just etch the text.
It worked pretty well, exact alignment wasn’t strictly necessary as it just had to be in the right area but it got the text nicely centered where I wanted it.
With that done I had a bunch of keyfobs ready to finish.
I got the tape off and applied a bit of danish oil to give them a nice finish
I experimented with filling the text with either resin, silver paint, or some glow in the dark powder but I wasn’t completely happy with the result it felt like the simple black of the etched lettering worked best against the relatively light colour of the wood. Plus the effort to get the letters smooth and readable was relatively high and I was running a little low on time. It also tended to cause the smaller letters to get rubbed out with the extra sanding. I kept the few versions I had that worked reasonably well but left the rest as is.
Next I just needed to add in my gems.
The holes I’d made allowed for a friction fit to hold them in place then I just added a little glue round the edges and a dab or two more to just secure them in place.
Finally the key chain hardware needed adding and here I realized I’d made a bit of an error in that if I wanted to center the attachment it lined up with one of the letters which because of the etching thinned the material quite a bit so caused the wood to fracture putting the little screw of the key chain in.
I moved the attachment point a little off center to a gap between the letters where it had more material to work with and that worked ok at the expense of the thing hanging a bit wonky.
I used a little hand drill to make the pilot hole so as not to split the wood driving the little screw loop in.
In the end I had a enough keychains for everyone to have one and a few spares just in case
They seemed to go over well with everyone at the party this weekend although I may have made too many as I ended up with a handful of extras
Those gems are incredible, plus I like the fact that if the gem ever falls out the keychain still works with solely the cut shape in the middle.