Custom Key Holder: Pine Engraving and Cutting
Making a custom key holder was one of the first things I had to make after moving into my new house, keys are like phones, they are too easy to misplace and take too long to find afterwards when needed.
For this custom key holder, I chose to use a piece of scrap Pine I had from an earlier project, running CNCROi.com, I always end-up with off-cuts that are too small or with dents or nicks in them but instead of throwing out the material, I keep it for my own personal use and these hundreds of online demos I make.
Like everything else I do in the shop, making a custom key holder is always a fun process, there are limits that must be adhered to and from that, I made a design that fit the space provided in my house.
I’ve made lots of great, mostly wooden, custom key holders, with infinite design possibilities, anything from hand drawn art to photographs can be used for a really unique key holder for your shop, home or business.
As you can see from the laser engraving process, the first pass I used was to break through the tougher top layer of the wood and then the subsequent passes were to progressively darken the wood by creating a layer of charcoal, its way easier to do it this way than to boot-up the CNC router and doing paint filling.
Pine is a wonderful material for a custom key holder, it’s relatively cheap, works very well with all the machinery we have at CNCROi.com and its light weight so I don’t have to nail a hole through a stud for fear of it ripping drywall down after nailing it to the wall.
When it comes to the design options, literally anything works when making a custom key holder, I tend to prefer trees and natural scenery for my custom key holders but if you prefer airplanes and robots, CNCROi.com can make those too!
Going along the nature theme, this custom key holder was from a drawing my uncle did on the wall which I took a photograph of and used it for both inside the CNCROi.com shop and a gift back to him to hold his keys.
There is a lot of smoke produced when making a custom key holder using 3/4″ or 18 mm thick Pine because of the process I use, this is what you want as a clean engraving won’t produce the contrast I need to avoid the additional step of paint filling.
If the surface of the Pine is looking rather white and uninteresting, it’s because I put a masking over it.
This is an important step because it means I have a lot less clean-up to do after the CNC laser engraving process is complete as the resins and smoke that settle back onto the wood are removed along with the masking rather than requiring extensive sanding for the same effect.
If you look closely, you can see the instant vaporization and smoke inducing burning that’s produced by our industrial CNC laser, there is fire in the production of each and every custom wooden custom key holder at CNCROi.com!
My nephew isn’t immune to getting a custom key holder either, again, made out of Pine and it still looks great to this day!
If you want to become good at something, you need a lot of practice and that’s what these online demos are really all about, I do a lot of custom pyrography at CNCROi.com using the laser and other techniques but I hone my skills when I’m off the clock for my personal projects to play with settings, speeds and different materials.
There is a lot of light in our industrial wide-format Austrian CNC laser, as a result, these photos are showing the grain with far more shade than there really is and the smoke far lighter than it really is as well.
It might not look like it’s getting all that much darker as I perform additional passes onto this custom key holder made out of Pine but nothing is further from the truth, the picture below shows how much of a shade difference is actually observed.
Of course, CNCROi.com can also make custom key chains to put onto your custom key holder, get things matching however you like!
The more smoke is produced during these additional laser passes, the better.
I do take my machine cleanliness very seriously though, so I have a powerful extraction both under the table and along the top to suck as much smoke out as possible as optics and smoke aren’t a good mix.
The final step after the darkening of the custom key holder is to cut it out of the scrap Pine board.
If you want custom keychains out of metal or even the custom key holder itself made out of metal, CNCROi.com can make that for you no problem, we are endlessly flexible when it comes to custom options for your very own items.
There is a lot of smoke on this Pine but as you can see from the masking, it’s both in the engraving and on the masking, not on the surface of the Pine which would require extensive sanding to remove.
After removing the protective masking and a little spot sanding, the final results look spectacular but as this is made from really not the best piece of Pine I have in the shop…
Wood pyrography is fun when it comes to making images and items come alive on wood especially though we can do the same on Corian, acrylic, polycarbonate, fabric… you name it.
You’ll notice the top of the smaller tree to the left broke off, not a big deal, there was just a weakness in the wood there and I decided to just leave it off rather than try to glue the small piece of Pine back onto the custom key holder.
The nails work great, I drilled the holes after making the references to them using the laser and they hold the keys wonderfully so if you want your own custom key holder, contact CNCROi.com right now!