No More Snapped Off Keys
Signs & Decorations June 3rd, 2009For a couple of years now, I’ve been leaving the keys for our games in the coin doors. Its worked OK for the most part. One night we had some kids over, and an old key that was already pretty bent wound up in 2 pieces by the end of the night.
I decided it would be good to get those keys out of the coin doors. What better place to put them then inside another coin door?
It holds 48 sets of keys. As you can see, I haven’t loaded many keys into it yet. I bought some clear mini photo key chains to stick flyer pics in like a lot of folks have been doing lately. I’ll use those for any games that I don’t already have a related keychain for.
I bought the key safe for this at Home Depot. It was right in their tool section near the machine they use to cut keys. I think it was $24.95. The outside was the same color as the inside. I hit it with some black Rustoleum, and decided it would be cool to make it look like a coin door.
I hacked up the coin entry/return bezels and coin return buttons from a spare coin door using my dremel so they would fit on the outside of the cabinet. It was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. Unfortunately, the coin entry bezels I had were metal and not nearly as easy to cut as they would be if they were the plastic kind.
This pic shows what one of the coin entry bezels looked like after I cut it in 2:

A coin return button after it was cut (but not yet separated):

Finished coin thingies laying nice and flat:

Here are a couple more pics showing it in relation to its surroundings:
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately modifying and making things for our arcade. I may draft the wife to help make some more toppers in the future.




July 5th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I’ve been looking through your website and I must say that I love it, I really like several of the ideas you have. I already have a key box that I use for all of my keys, but I’m now thinking about getting one for the game keys and doing something like this.
I just want to say thanks publishing all this info, you’ve done a great job.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Hey Duncan,
Thanks! Glad you like my site. I just checked yours out…you have some cool projects on there too.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
[...] it? He took some coin door bezels and put them on the key box to make it look like a coin door, check it out! Anyway I took his idea and did the same thing, it was not my idea, I got the idea from his [...]
August 31st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
That is too cool! Your baby pac turned out great(as did my own restoration following your lead)!
September 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hey Dan,
Thanks! Glad you got yours in working order. It’s a great game and definitely worth the effort to fix up.
December 27th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Looks great! How about some details on how you attached the bezels to the key box? Thanks.
Jim
December 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Hi Jim,
Thanks! For the bezels, I positioned them on the front where I wanted them, and measured their edges. I then opened the door, made the measurements inside and marked the position of the screw holes for the bezels. I drilled the holes, and screwed them in from the back.
December 22nd, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Where is that LED “Eat Me” sign from? Also, you’re on YouTube, too, right?
December 23rd, 2010 at 9:59 am
Hi Tyler,
I made that sign. I have a few posts on here about it. Here they are in order:
http://www.noiselandarcade.net/index.php/2008/03/03/let-there-be-light-emitting-diodes/
http://www.noiselandarcade.net/index.php/2008/03/04/led-sign-update/
http://www.noiselandarcade.net/index.php/2008/03/07/my-usbtinyisp-is-a-bigpita/
http://www.noiselandarcade.net/index.php/2008/03/08/its-aliveits-aliveits-alive/