---
title: Making custom wedding cufflinks
author: George Mandis <george@mand.is>
date: 2014-06-26
tags: post, post, cufflinks, projects, weddings, artsy craftsy
---

<p>My good friend is getting married. Knowing my penchant for artsy-craftsy projects he asked if I might make custom cufflinks for his groomsmen. I somewhat foolishly dropped what I was doing — you know, <a href="http://snaptortoise.com">real work</a> — and jumped on the task <span class='footnote'>(The realization that this sort of problem-solving was so much more appealing to me at that moment got me thinking about some sort abrupt career-shift on my horizon, though I have no idea what that would be exactly.)</span>. After a lot of measuring, parts sourcing and out-right guessing, the major components of the wedding cufflinks arrived in the mail today.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1251" src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/georgemandis/media/2014-06-26-23.01.22-1024x768.jpg" alt="2014-06-26 23.01.22" width="1024" height="768" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>And this evening I spent a solid hour prepping the pieces, glueing things together and leaving the wooden bits to soak in an oil &amp; beeswax mixture overnight so that the wood might look extra rich when the whole thing's finished.</p>
<p>The request for cufflinks was not entirely without precedent — <a title="Homemade Cufflinks" href="/2014/02/homemade-cufflinks/">I've made a few before</a> with the left-over coins I had from my travels, last year. These were a little more fun and involved, featuring a monogrammed bamboo face with a walnut ring.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1252" src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/georgemandis/media/2014-06-26-23.02.10-768x1024.jpg" alt="2014-06-26 23.02.10" width="768" height="1024" /></p>
<p>The width of the walnut ring was as big as I wanted to make it and just barely worked out so that I could glue both segments to the largest cufflink pads I could find:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1253" src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/georgemandis/media/2014-06-26-23.02.38-1024x768.jpg" alt="2014-06-26 23.02.38" width="1024" height="768" /></p>
<p>There was something soothing and meditative about sitting around and assembling these things. I'd liken it to the same primal satisfaction one gets staring into a campfire, or stepping away from the fire to go gaze at a starry night sky. A simple, repetitive thing that lets my brain wander joyfully and revel in the beauty of something so basic as a collection of little, wooden circles.</p>
<p>I'll post some photos when they're finished. It's making me happy to make them — no doubt because I'm making them for some people I care about quite deeply — but I also think, hope and suspect they'll like them.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1254" src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/georgemandis/media/2014-06-26-23.02.50-1024x768.jpg" alt="2014-06-26 23.02.50" width="1024" height="768" /></p>
<p>In the meantime... If you're looking for some custom cufflinks like these for <em>your </em>wedding (or some such thing) <a title="Contact" href="/contact/">please get in touch</a>!</p>