Memory Coin Keyring

Since my brother and his wife have recently had their first child, I thought I'd make them a nice memory gift for it (not that it's the kind of thing that slips your mind really). I've made one for myself and my children before but didn't record the process but this is done in the same way.

First of all, and fairly self-evidently, you'll need the correct number of coins of the correct year. In this case, 1984, 1986 and 2014. I only discovered after starting to collect the coins (which took about three months) that in the UK we apparently produced very few pennies in 1986 and very few tuppences in 1984 but was eventually able to find matching pennies for all three years.

I bought a cheap keyring and removed the plastic tab. The garden wire will be bent into loops to fasten the coins to this.

I also used a piece of wood with a hole drilled into it to rest the coins in whilst working, to prevent them from being flung across the shed if they slipped.

I slotted the coins into the hole and chose the spot to drill through - the top of the queen's forehead in each case. I put a small drop of oil over the spot before using a dremel to drill to reduce friction and heat (although the heat buildup was pretty impressive).

Once I'd drilled the holes through I used a grinder bit (not sure of the exact name, but it resembles a dentist's drill) to smooth the edges and remove any metal snags.
I did this on both sides of the coin, making a smooth lip to the hole.

I stripped the plastic from the wire and wound it around a piece of metal (changeable screwdriver - rubbish quality but a nice shiny blue look) to form a spring. I then snipped the wire loops with pincers and slid them through the holes.

I put the loops around the keyring and tightened them with pliers carefully. This doubled the loops over due to the length of wire used and helped with the strength of the fastening.

After taking the actual introduction image, I decided to add a connecting loop of chain onto the keyring as the coins didn't look quite right when directly onto it. I made sure whilst fitting that the coins all faced the same way - easy thing to get wrong and it looks much nicer as a matching set.

The other image is of the one I made for myself. The 2p is for me and the two pennies for my children. I had originally wanted to do the same thing for the gift (larger coin for the parent) but was unable to find the correct dates so decided to use matching coins instead.