Flightless Rectangular Logo Keyfob, Made of Offcut Steel

The dyed-in-the-wool skinflint in me sees all the little scraps and offcuts left over from every bar of steel stock and I can't help but think there's got to be something I can do with the stuff that's better than throwing it away or, possibly worse, letting it languish in the scrap bucket slowly rusting forever.

I was messing around doing some settings tuning on my laser engraver one night and saw the array of increasingly perfectly formed penguins all marching along in a grid like that and it gave me a brilliant idea. Why not cut all those out? So I did.

Well, actually, I didn't. Because I'd arranged them too close together and most of them were cut with the wrong laser settings. But I found some more scrap pieces of steel and knocked out these.

You know how some brands give you a little business card, or maybe if you're lucky a cheap plastic tag? Yeah, about that.

These are made from genuine offcuts of the same steel I make my knives out of. Thus, this is a bit of a grab-bag and any particular fob may wind up being made of D2 or CPM154 or whatever else I'm working with. On the non-stainless ones, I clear coat them to keep the rust at bay.

For a key ring tchotchke, these might just be the most badass ones in the world. They also come complete with zero built in features, and have no functionality whatsoever.

As usual there is a lot of manual labor that goes into making these. I grind them out on the belt just the same as my knives, and with the best will in the world I just eyeball the corners and where the hole gets drilled. The process for engraving the logo into it is the exact same one I use for my knives nowadays as well, and produces a pleasing (if you ask me) coin-like bass relief sort of effect that really catches the light impressively. Don't get thrown by the product photos which are inevitably magnified to some degree depending on the size of your screen and really. These aren't much bigger than a quarter.



On the rear is a QR code which just leads right back here. In case, perhaps, you forget where you got it from. Do me a favor and show all your friends while you're at it, though. Thanks.