I don’t speak Klingon and i don’t know how to write any code from scratch, but by many measures i’m a geek. I was using a duct tape wallet for quite a while but they have become so ubiquitous that i needed something new. During the routine dissection of a desktop computer keyboard i pondered the plastic sheets with the printed circuits on them. The material seemed durable, flexible, and it just screams electronics geek. So i made a wallet out of it. The first one i made about a year ago. I submitted the idea and sample to ReadyMade Magazine and they liked it but didn’t publish it. I made another in October and started using it daily. Over 5 months of use and i have only needed to add one small piece of tape to repair a torn seam. A few weeks ago i submitted the idea to Make: Magazine but i have not heard anything back. So now i’m entering it in the Instructables Popular Science contest. For a complete and detailed tutorial go to the Instructables true geek wallet page.

Open up an old keyboard and pull out the circuit sheet and make a wallet out of it. It is much more nerdy than duct tape.

March 28th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
popsci is the best publication… i really hope they pick it up.
April 25th, 2007 at 7:51 am
wonderful! you deserve the win. congrats zieak.
November 25th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Hey…can you do this with laptop keyboards? I have 2 laying around (coffee and a laptop and a toddler don’t mix) and would love to put them to some use…but I have NO idea what lies beneath the keys.
THANKS!
November 25th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I’m not sure Erin. I took one laptop apart that had one but it had a lot of perforations in it and it was really old – maybe close to 10 years old.