Apple still won’t sell you an AirTag Hermès Key Ring from its own store, even if you’re willing to lay out the $349 for one. But a 9to5Mac reader made his own copy, and has shared the template and all the details you need to make your own …
It’s just a bit of fun. Ron Farber-Newman wasn’t trying to fool anyone with the result, he just wanted to see what could be done.
Impressively, this was actually Farber-Newman’s first ever leather project!
My primary hobby is laser cutting. I’ve wanted to find a leather-working project where I could use my laser cutter to cut precise leather parts for awhile now. When Apple released the AirTag, and subsequently, Hermès released their $449 leather AirTag key ring, I couldn’t help but find myself inspired to try my hand at making a knock-off version for a fraction of the price by developing a template, which I’m providing here for free!
The project took maybe 8-10 hours, from design to final assembly. Consumable material costs for one AirTag case is probably only $5-10. All in, with tools and supplies I can use on future projects, I probably spent around $100.
He did the hole-punching for the stitching by hand, but used the laser cutter to create a guide.
I wanted a reference for myself for where to punch, so I created a dotted line with gap spacing to match the gap of the prongs on the leather stitching chisels I had ordered, which was 3 millimeters. I etched these dots very lightly before cutting the parts out […]
As for the primary cut settings, on my 80W laser, I used 15 millimeters per second at 10% power, with 2 passes. Those were the settings I found that cut through the leather nicely without overly scorching it […]
One thing I noticed about the real Hermès AirTag case from the product images on Apple’s site was that it appeared to have a nice rounded-over edge, so I wanted to do this on my case too. I used a leather chamfering tool to take off the hard corner of all my pieces.
You can find all the details, including a link to the template, at his website Farbulous Creations – as well as watch the project video below.
If you’re not quite up to making your own AirTag accessories, check out our roundup of the best AirTag keychains, cases, and straps.
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