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Deal or No Deal Cufflinks
5 
My wife recently was picked to play Deal or No Deal. She was lucky enough to get ’saved’ to play her game on Christmas day. Unfortunately we only won a penny (and a nice holiday), but it was an amazing experience and I met some of the most genuine and fantastic people in my life.
Anyway, before my wife started filming back in June she asked me to make some cufflinks for Noel and the Banker. I’d started making my own cufflinks a few years ago. I’d wanted some Mario cufflinks as I’m a big Nintendo fan and lifelong video gamer. I couldn’t find any, so decided to make my own…
As I don’t like doing things by half, and as millions of people would see them I wanted to do something a little different. The boxes were an obvious choice for Noel, but they needed to be different. Unique.
I’d been planning my designs for a ringlight using LEDs for my camera and the idea hit of creating a hinged box that lights up when you open it (a bit like the box in the opening credits of the show). I then figured I’d use red and blue LEDs to signify the red and blue values inside the boxes.
I only had a couple of days to completely build them so didn’t have enough time to work out a hinge mechanism and switch for the box lid – especially one that had to be so small.
Plan B was to have a switch at the bottom to turn them on and off. I couldn’t find a switch small enough in the house so I resorted to plan C. That was to use some tiny push-to-make switches. I knew I had some old mice in the loft that I could find some of those.
It meant that you had to hold down the button to get the LED on, but at least that would save on batteries, because they were going to have to be small, very, very small.
Scroll down to see how I put it all together.
The Banker’s cufflinks were really easy. I printed it out around 100 tiny likenesses of a note and cut them out, glued the centres with PVA glue so they fanned out a little, cut out a slim piece of metal and bent it into a money clip.
I then sprayed the whole lot with an acrylic varnish to help stop it getting damaged (it’s still pretty fragile).
Banker's Cufflinks
Noel’s cufflinks:
Looked at a few different ideas to make the boxes, but settled on lego as the most convenient given my time constraints. I cut it in half and removed the inside and lumpy bits on the top, and used some 1200 grit wet and dry to polish up the cuts.
Drilled a small hole in the bottom and glued the button in place.
I used heat shrink sleaving to hold wire connectors onto the 1.5V button cell batteries. They were the smallest button cells I could find. The LED’s had a forward voltage of 3V, so two 1.5V batteries were ideal. I used a 100Ohm resistor to make sure the batteries weren’t flattened too quickly.
I rearranged the insides to fit and gave it a test.
Using hot glue a ’sealed’ the insides so they couldn’t move, and stuck on the back and the lid slightly ajar (by making a small chamfer on the back).
A cleanup of the boxes and a few finishing touches.
That is totally awesome! I thought the cufflinks looked great – more so now I’ve seen them close(r) up.
Didn’t know you were a Nintendo fan
Thanks Jem.
Yep, big Nintendo fanboy. (currently helping my son play through Zelda Ocarina of time on my old N64.)
God job Rob
Very nice!
Rob, you really are a genius. I treasure the cufflinks. They mean so much to me! It’s amazing to read how you actually did it. Really fantastic!
is there any chance i can buy some of these off you?, i am a big fan of deal or no deal