The making of wooden hotel keychains
04/12/2024
A very specific design was made for hotel keychains:
- it must allow an easy distinction of the room for which it opens the doors,
- it needs to display the hotel logo and address,
- it should prevent any damage done to the room's door,
- it should discourage the customer from keeping it in their pocket.
Somehow these constraints ended in a typical solution, made in metal to add weight to cumbersomeness.
Seeing such a keychain being replaced by a crude solution, numerunique had the idea to make a wooden equivalent which found its place at Brantigny Castle.
These unique keychains are made from the centennial boxwood of the estate. Yet, from the idea to the actual realisation there are quite a few steps… Here is a hint of what the making of such keychains implies…
It start from a block of wood. There is a non trivial job to go from the log to the block of wood but let's go directly to what is more specific to the making of this wooden keychain. The first step is to settle the block of wood on the 4th axis of a CNC.
The next step is to set the origins on all 4 axes.
Then the profile of the keychain is milled.
Now we mill a rough approximation of the hemisphere on both sides.
After changing the flat end bit to a hemispheric tool on the CNC, the next step is to smooth the hemispheres of the keychain.
Now comes a tricky part: the last tool path before the manual separation of the keychain from the block of wood.
And a manual sanding ends the job.
The address of the castle, numerunique brand's name and unique identifier are then laser-engraved onto a specially designed support for this purpose.
But for a better readability and durability, the room's name is laser-engraved on a special support that imitates a golden plaque.
Experience has shown that a beautiful object must be delivered in a beautiful case. Thus a specific box was designed and built. It is made by laser-cutting its silhouette on a sheet of special paper.
That's all, folks. Let's go back to numerunique's workshop.
