Making a cryptex is all about understanding the mechanics. Once you do, you’ll be able to adapt the mechanism however you want. To better explain how it works, I drew up a quick 3D model of a basic cryptex withonly one lock wheel attached in Google Sketchup

The basic parts in a cryptex are an inner tube, an outer tube, and lock wheels. The inner tube is here red. The blue knob on the picture is attached to the inner tube and acts as a pin in a lock. On a complete cryptex, you’ll have one for each lock wheel. The outer tube, here yellow, should be just big enough to house the inner tube. It also needs a cut down the length of it so that the lock pins/knobs/whateveryouwanttocallthem on the inner tube can fit through the outer tube, making it possible for the inner tube to be inserted into the outer tube with the knobs sliding down the outer tube cut/track/opening/whatever.

The inner tube is what holds you “treasure”. The point of a cryptex is to make the inner tube removable only when the correct combination is entered with the lock wheels. To stop the inner tube from being removed, you have to create a barrier so that the knobs that stick out of the inner tube and through the outer tube gets stuck on something. That’s where the lock wheels come in. Their inner hole should initially be made to fit the outer tube exactly, so that the lock wheels can spin around it. The lck wheels need to be at least twice as thick as the knobs. You then need to duplicate the mechanism seen in the second picture above – half the thickness of the lock wheel should be a wider hole to let the knob spin freely, and the other half should only have a small portion of it cut out to let the knob through.

When the inner tube is inserted completely, the lock wheels will be able to spin freely because the knobs are located in the half of the lock wheel that has a cutout all the way around, like the position in the second image above. However, to remove the inner tube, all the tiny cutouts in the other half of the lock wheel also have to line up to create a single uninterrupted track for the knobs to slide through as the  inner tube is removed. Naturally, the right combination will be the one that makes all these cutouts line up, whereas any wrong combination will have at least one misaligned cutout to prevent the knobs to slide out.

This is how you make a “proper” cryptex, but it can be done simple. My cryptex doesn’t have one knob for each wheel, and it doesn’t have the two different cutouts for each lock wheel. Instead, it has only two knobs. When the inner tube is fully inserted, these knobs rest inside the 6th wheel and end cap of the cryptex, respectively. This allows the other 6 wheels – that is, number 1-5 and 7 – to move freely, even though they only have a cutout that lines up in a certain position. This is easier to make, but easier to “cheat” to open. In theory, you can open a cryptex by pulling on the inner tube while turning all wheels at different speeds. Due to the different speeds, all wheels will sooner or later line up – but it can take ages. Fewer pins/knobs like in my crpytex means you only need to line up two wheels at a time. However, my cryptex is a geocache, so if people really want to cheat that badly, go ahead.

Hopefully this made a light turn on for anyone reading it and wondering how a cryptex works. If not, well, I can’t help you. This might, however.

My beloved Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones have been through a lot and it shows. I’ve had to fix the plug several times because there get throw around and treated unfairly, but it’s a hassle every time. After my roomate got some cheap wireless headphones I did a little mod that will fix both that problem and give me a pair of wireless headphones as well.

The mod is pretty straight forward. I cut off the cable of the DT770 and replaced it with a female 3.5mm jack. That means that I can use any male-male 3.5mm cable I want to connect it to stuff, so no more having to fix the cable if it breaks. Then I took apart the Bluetooth receiver and switched out the headphones that are hardwired onto it with a male 3.5mm cable. It was hard because the thing is very tiny, but it worked. Now I can connect the Bluetooth receiver to my DT770 or my pillow-speaker, the Fiio S3. The former isn’t the prettiest setup ever, but it’ll do the job. I’ll stick with cables for the most part anyways.

The video for this one ended up being 30 minutes, so I won’t retype all I said here. I do however have some additional comments that might not have been fully covered in the video.

With regards to tint, that’s one thing I’ve always found it a pain in the ass to show on pics and videos because cameras compensate for it. Tint is basically the color of the light, whether it looks slightly re, yellow, blue, green, white etc. It affects how objects you light up look compared to how they’d look in sunlight which is how it’s “supposed” to look. Luckily there are people out there with far more experience than me on this subject, so I’ll refer you to selfbuilt’s guide to tints on CPF.

I did however try my best to at least show the basic principle of the tint difference between my three AAA lights by taking a few pics with my DSLR, with the white balance set to sunlight, 1/15 second exposure and an aperture of f.5.0. These lights have very different beams and output though so that clouds the result a little bit. However you can see the color difference in the light produced.

From top to bottom: iTP A3 Upgrade Edition, Tank007 TK-703 and 4sevens Preon 2. The A3 has a clear yellow tint, which makes it look more like real sunlight and produces the most natural colors. The TK-703 has a blue tint, which makes everything look rather unnatural in my opinion. Lastly the Preon’s tint is green-ish, which is somewhere in between (probably because green is a mix of blue and yellow). Not as unnatural as the TK-703, but not as natural as the A3. I don’t know the fancy names for the tints and these are just my observations, I don’t pretend to be an expert on flashlights as that’s what we have the people at CPF for. These pictures also show the difference in beam strength and shape especially the difference between the tight TK-703 hotspot and the smoother hotspot of the Preon and A3.

Also regarding being water proof, I brielfy mention in the video how you lose that ability when you mess with the tailcap rubber thingy. By default the light is waterproof according to the IPX-8 standard, which means you can submerge it down to 1m+. In other words you can take it swimming, but not diving.

As for prices, there are a whole lot of different Preons currently available. Different colors, titanium instead of aluminum etc. Instead of explaining all here, just head over to 4sevens.com and see what they have. There is also a Preon ReVo light, but that doesn’t use the modular system of the Preon 1 and 2. Also, if you do buy from there, orders of $20-> means you can use coupon CPF8 to get 8% off (I of course forgot to do that…).

Lastly the mod and accessories I did for this light. There’s a tritium mod which adds a self-luminating tritium vial to the pocket clip for locating the light in the dark. The tritum vial and the Norland 61 optical adhesive were both bought from CPF marketplace, from this guy and this guy respectively.

I also made a couple of diffusers. The first one is made from a upside down frosted glass soap tray, a Romisen RC-N3 AA extension tube, some aluminum foil and hot glue. When the Preon is “docked” in that thing on my nightstand I can see the locator and know the clicky is right above it, and the diffuser spreads the light well enough to see what I need. In fact, in Preon 2 configuration on high mode it’s ridiculously bright. The second diffuser is a plastic housing from a lipstick shaped hard candy stick filled with some hot glue. Instead of using a reflector when walking the streets at night I put on the diffuser and hang the light down my side with the pocket clip. Works brilliantly and much more visible than a reflector.

Below is the videos and a bunch of extra pictures.

A while back I had an idea for a system to attach a spork to my Squirt PS4. I did a prototype using some hardening model clay but the whole thing was a bit bulky. The only way I could see it be practical would be if the whole thing was made of metal and a solid piece, like the 3D model mockup:

Today though it hit me that there was a much, much easier way of doing this that didn’t require anything special at all. The whole idea is to have a spork/spoon/etc that has a wide enough flat handle to be able to cut and bend it and cut out a slot for he PS4 (and other squirt models’) flat Phillips head screwdriver. The idea worked brilliantly and it was a very quick and easy mod to do. I am going to pick up some ehatshrink to add “walls” to the Phillips slot tomorrow but it already works the way I hoped just from the pressure of the bent handle. When I get my hands on that spork I ordered ages ago I will probably do the same to it as this seems like the easiest way of making a Squirt attachement.

The tools in the kit was just what I needed to make the part necessary for the liner lock mod. Making the holes for the pivots was the hardest part since I had to do it using the wrong tools still (had no drill) but I managed to do it. Everything works fully, doesn’t add much thickness and I’, generally very happy with it. See the video and pictures for more details.

I’m in college so I live in something in between a dorm room and an apartment (the concept doesn’t really exist in the US), and so I have very limited access to tools compared to what I have at home. That’s why a fairly simple thing to do like making the spring needed for the Squirt line lock mod is suddenly not so simple anymore. Since I couldn’t do that, I started thinking about why I need a locking blade on the PS4 and came to the comclusion that opening things like heat sealed thick plastic packaging is really what I need it for. I then realized that I could make a smaller blade shaped like an x-acto blade and basically solve the problem that way.

This was a very simple mod to do, only requiring using a cutting wheel on my Dremel on one of my spare Squirt/style blades. By making the blade like that, I move the tip from the back and to the front and reduce the overall length of the blade, which accomplishes two things: first off, applying pressure to the tip now forces the blade open rather than forcing the blade towards the pivot point and close to forcing it closed. Secondly, the shorter length means less leverage is applied and you need more force on the tip to make it shut.

The result is absolutely perfect. Not only can I now open plastic packaging without risking losing a finger or two, but I can also cut through things that I previously couldn’t. This basically means I don’t need a liner lock blade, so I can scrap that project for now.

Check out the video below to see the knife in action.

The idea behind this mod is basically to make a smaller version of the Leatherman Freestyle. The Freestyle itself is a version of the Skeletool series, of which I’ve had both models and still have a Skeletool CX.

The stock Leatherman Style CS which is the basis of this mod is somewhat of a ladies’ Leatherman, with scissors as the main tool and a nailfile in the handle (along with a blade of course). Originally it was supposed to have a thumb hole on the blade for easy one hand opening just like its bigger brother but the final version didn’t have that. This mod removes the carabiner, turning the Style CS into a smaller version of the Freestyle rather than a smaller version of the Skeletool. It also replaces the large scissors with pliers and adds that thumb hole to the blade. Lastly it puts a smaller pair of scissors in the handle, replacing the nail file.

To do this mod you need a donor Leatherman PS4 to get the smaller scissors and the pliers (or another way of getting the two parts, like a P4 and a Style etc). Replacing the pliers is relatively easy once you learn how to force the pivots back through the holes (use a screwdriver with a pointed tip as a guide, like one of the two T6 torx screwdrivers you need to take the Style CS and PS4 apart). Adding the thumb hole to the blade is a bit more tricky, and requires a Dremel or similar precision tool. I used a worn down SpeedClic (EZ lock) cutting wheel since it had a smaller diameter from being worn down. I then used some diamond tipped engraving tools to form the hole.

Furthermore you need to do a careful job of thinning out the plastic handle that holds the tweezers and nailfile in order to fit the scissors. This is a trial and error process and I recommend a sanding wheel or similar to do the job. Be very careful not to remove too much plastic since you do want that hand there to shield the scissors, while at the same time making enough room for the scissors to close properly. you also need to shave off a bit of the scissors themselves, namely the handle you press down when using them. You’ll realize this as you work your way through the scissors fitting. You also need to make the nail nick of the scissors accessible by sanding a groove int he plastic handle.

Cutting off the carabiner is of course not mandatory if you like to have it there. I prefer the smaller size, so I cut it off and used some fine grit sand paper to smooth the cut edges to not make it cut my hand while using it.

This mod is not an easy “LEGO build” like switching out tools in a pivoted PS4, so you do need to know how to work a Dremel to do it. I think the result is pretty nice though, and the similarity to the Freestyle is almost scary.

Below is some pictures and a video showing off the finished Free-Style CS.

You need very small batteries to do this, I bought some AG0 1.55V batteries from eBay and used 4 of them. They even fit into the smallest address container I had, leaving at least 3mm of free space in the cap, so making one using the same size container as the one I used for a painkiller would be even easier. This is just a proof of concept so I didn’t make a twist on/off mechanism that worked, but there’s room in that to do it. I’d much rather have my Streamlight Nano but at least this shows it’s possible to go smaller.

Someone made a topic on multitool.org about turning a Style CS into a miniature Skeletool by replacing the scissors with pliers. It’s an easy job if you have a pair of spare pliers from a Squirt, which I happened to have from my dismantled P4. I ordered a Style CS and Style from Amazon through a friend and they arrived today.

Replacing the pliers is an easy job. You unscrew the pivots, slide them out, remove the scissors and put on the pliers. It’s a bit hard to get the pivot through the last hole since the springs will put tension on it pushing it to the side, but using a small pointed screwdriver of some sorts (like the T6 driver you need to unscrew the pivots) you can force it back on track and push it through from the other side. I also had to trim off a bit of the handle springs that make the pliers snap into place because they were flexing out so much they touched and make a little “bump” when you closed the plier head completely. This was a very quick job with the Dremel and doesn’t ruin any functionality.

I also removed the main blade and put in the scissors from the Style. These are the same scissors as on the PS4/ES4, so much smaller and handle based compared to the stock Style CS scissors. They’re thicker than the other tools though (nail file/blade) so you need to fit it in place of the blade to avoid the plastic handle bulging if you try putting it where the nail file is.

Lastly I used my Dremel to remove some plastic bits that separate the tweezers from the nail file in the other handle. That left me enough room to fit the blade in there instead of the file and tweezers. I used my Dremel to round off the tip of the blade as otherwise the tip would stick out a bit and be dangerous. I also added a nail nick to make it easier to open in the new location.

All in all the mod took about an hour, including picture taking, so it’s a rather simple procedure. Just switching out the scissors and pliers is much faster of course. Check out the pictures and video to see the finished Mini Skeletool in action.