Turn Beer Caps Into Jewelry!

Beer caps are often works of art by themselves. Some people like to collect them, but I don't have time and space for that kind of hobby. However, for me, some beer caps are just too beautiful to throw away and deserve a second life. So I decided to turn one into a minimalistic pendant.

This project can be made with basic hand tools in less than an hour.

Let's get started!

If you speak French, here's a quick video about the project:

The metal part of the pendant is made out of metal. As I don't have access to a CNC nor the workshop of Clickspring, I salvaged a metal disc from a broken hard drive. The disc that maintains the magnetic platter on the spindle is made with a CNC and perfectly balanced. Recycling that piece will make the project a whole lot cleaner and faster to make. It'll also make the final product look like it was made in a more advanced workshop.

To open up a hard drive, there aren't ten thousand solutions - you'll have to remove all the screws that maintain the drive together. Usually, manufacturers use Torx screws on these enclosures, so keep that in mind if you have only a limited set of tools. Also, don't force - if a screw doesn't want to come out, you probably have a screwdriver that's just slightly too small.

There's also a secret screw under the label of most hard drives (to prevent people from sabotaging their hard drives and complaining about warranty afterwards).

I disassembled three drives and got three different looking discs. I'm going to use the thickest one.

I then cut the beer cap to size. It has to fit in the hard drive ring with the smallest tolerance possible.

I began by placing the beer cap upside down in the ring. I then traced to the contour with a marker.

To make the cutting easier, I first flattened the cap with a pair of pliers. Then, I cut out the useful part of the cap using aviator snips.

Use gloves when cutting the cap! The cut edges are incredibly sharp!

When the cutting is done, you can use nail polish remover, to remove any marker marks.

To make the pendant cleaner from the outside, I placed a piece of golden paper in the ring.

To glue the two pieces together, I used some liquid superglue. It's not perfect, as it can stick to your fingers really easily if you add too much of it.

If your beer cap doesn't fit perfectly after the first cut, don't worry: you can still remove pieces afterwards, but you won't be able to add pieces back if you cut too much from the edge.

The two pieces should fit perfectly and the beer cap should be stable (not rocking/sliding in the ring).

Because I used too much glue, the result wasn't as neat as it could have been. To cover up my mistake, I used some white spray paint for metal to fill the gap between the cap and the ring.

I first covered the rest of the ring with painter's tape, then, using a toothpick, added paint in the gap.

If you used the right amount of glue, i can skip this step :)

To add a cord to the pendant, I made a small channel in the back with a Dremel. The cut doesn't have to be perfect, as it's going to be covered up later. You can also use a small file if you don't have access to a Dremel.

The final step was to add the string.

I put the string in place, then glued and screwed a small piece of wood on top of the channel. That piece was made with a knife and didn't take me more than five minutes to make.

I finally made a sliding knot in both ends of the string, to make the length of the string adjustable.

I hope you liked this project and got some inspiration from it!

You can support me by liking this Instructable and I'm always open to any suggestions!

Until next time!