TOPIC: Help: Making my own token-holding accessories?

Greetings and salutations! Following my very first foray into True Dungeon at Gen Con 2023, and an encounter with a very suave token trader set up outside the exit, I'm pretty sure I'm hooked. With the token trader's help (I don't remember his name, but he dealt in GP and had a red velvet bag that you could pull a token from for 25GP), and about 1100GP in tokens drawn from the treasure box, I cobbled together the basis for a really silly max Dex build. I then spent about $40 on tokens to further/complete my build. Chump change for some of you, I'm sure lol

Well, I'm a crafter/maker by hobby, and I have a 3D printer that sometimes works, so I've decided to make some token-holding accessories (Finally, the topic, right?), starting with the basis for the token-holding aspect. Now, I've seen beautiful wood amulets and holders that use the same sort of magnet-and-dome system that the sliders use (another project I want to pursue, but I have neither the space required to set up a combat table nor the information required to roughly replicate a slider, so to the back burner it goes), and figure that's a tried-and-true way to hold tokens, and let them be easily retrievable.

SO! I've come to the forums! There's... not much I've found in a cursory search, so I figured I'd make a topic and see what I can find while getting proper answers from you fine folk!

The big question is what size and strength magnets are used. The less-important question is if there's a minimum depth to the... pushy-downy... area...

The least fun but easiest solution would be if someone shared schematics, measurements, or CAD files for the exact thing that I'm trying to make, but that, as I said, is not fun lol

Knowledge Update! Based on pictures of Rockwell's excellent holders, it seems like he's using 1/4" diameter (well, 6.5mm, which is the measuring system I'm using in Fusion360) disc magnets, which leads me to either asking Nick directly how thick the magnets he uses are, or, more realistically, buying a bunch of different thicknesses and testing them out.

I could also just buy a holder and utterly deface it, but that's... ugh! My craftsman soul weeps at the thought! Not only would I be plagiarizing another's work directly, I'd also be ruining their, well, work! And that's just wrong on so many levels.

I've not worked with this project myself but I've done a lot with magnets back in my robotics days. If I were to guess, they're likely just 1/4 inch diameter, 1/16 inch thick magnets. If you got Neodymium magnets in that size it would be complete over kill, that tiny little token isn't going anywhere under any use case (assuming it is set in a recessed cavity) Frankly, you'll probably have your glue fail before the magnet.

I couldn't advise you on the depth of the dome unless I knew more about your project, and what you want it to be. All I can say now is you'd want the depth to be at least 1.5-2x the depth of a token so you can get your finger in behind it for easy removal.

I think the pucks have a 1/4-1/3 inch depth if my memory serves correctly.

I couldn't advise you on the depth of the dome unless I knew more about your project, and what you want it to be.

I've done some preliminary modelling. And by "preliminary", apparently I mean "all I need to do is put some attachment points for some straps and I'm pretty much done"...

Here's the token holder module thing I've got right now, as well as a dummy token placed within. (All renders, haven't actually made anything physical yet).


From there, I made a preliminary bracer. Now, I'm a hardlines modeller, not a softlines one, so this is literally just a chunk of pipe fitted to my forearm, in essence. I'm going to try to fillet the edges where the token holder modules connect with the bracer so it's not as jarring, or at least something like that.


I can always just export out the token holder module so I can put it in other things, like belt buckles, amulets, sword scabbards...

If you got Neodymium magnets in that size it would be complete over kill, that tiny little token isn't going anywhere under any use case (assuming it is set in a recessed cavity) Frankly, you'll probably have your glue fail before the magnet.

That's a very fair point. Neodymium should do just fine regardless of depth lol

Side note: I've been calling them "Neodynium", pronounced "KNEE-oh-din-eum". Thanks, dyslexia...

Dan R wrote:

I couldn't advise you on the depth of the dome unless I knew more about your project, and what you want it to be.

I've done some preliminary modelling. And by "preliminary", apparently I mean "all I need to do is put some attachment points for some straps and I'm pretty much done"...

Here's the token holder module thing I've got right now, as well as a dummy token placed within. (All renders, haven't actually made anything physical yet).


From there, I made a preliminary bracer. Now, I'm a hardlines modeller, not a softlines one, so this is literally just a chunk of pipe fitted to my forearm, in essence. I'm going to try to fillet the edges where the token holder modules connect with the bracer so it's not as jarring, or at least something like that.


I can always just export out the token holder module so I can put it in other things, like belt buckles, amulets, sword scabbards...

If you got Neodymium magnets in that size it would be complete over kill, that tiny little token isn't going anywhere under any use case (assuming it is set in a recessed cavity) Frankly, you'll probably have your glue fail before the magnet.

That's a very fair point. Neodymium should do just fine regardless of depth lol

Side note: I've been calling them "Neodynium", pronounced "KNEE-oh-din-eum". Thanks, dyslexia...

I can't help with the Token holder specs but dude, that bracer is awesome!! Always nice to have a new player join the game and I'm excited to see what you come up with.

You might want to PM MasterEd as I believe he was involved with the original magnet Token holders.

Welcome to TD and the Forum!

Rob F wrote: You might want to PM MasterEd as I believe he was involved with the original magnet Token holders.

+1, I'd ask Ed as well.

Also cool bracer!

Graven wrote: Welcome to TD and the Forum!

Rob F wrote: You might want to PM MasterEd as I believe he was involved with the original magnet Token holders.

+1, I'd ask Ed as well.

Also cool bracer!

Rob F wrote: I can't help with the Token holder specs but dude, that bracer is awesome!! Always nice to have a new player join the game and I'm excited to see what you come up with.

Thank you for the welcome and the kind words! I'm thinking now of leaving it blank like this and importing it to blender or something and trying my hand at sculpting, but I've got no idea if I can, like, lock geometry so I don't have to worry about accidentally mutilating my token holder spots...

I've sent a PM to MasterED, so maybe I'll hear back at some point, maybe I won't, I'm sure he's busy.

Once I put the attachment points on, I'm thinking of attaching an OBJ or STL or something to this topic so people can mess around with it if they want (but I'll be putting my maker's mark on it, methinks, so I can spot them in the wild), unless there's some rule against some aspect of that or another.

I've added attachment points for straps, exported it as an OBJ, and then imported it to Blender and smoothed it out a ton. However, the original sharp bracer can easily be used as the basis for a steampunk or for clay is you want to manually sculpt stuff.

I've added my maker's mark to the inside of the bracer and ask that you leave it alone if you choose to make alterations to the bracer.

As the files are A) not a supported file type and too large to upload here, so you can find them in my google drive here . Do keep in mind that the bracer was made to fit my arm, so you may need to make adjustments there, and the token holder bit is sized to fit tokens, so, unfortunately, scaling isn't possible easily.

If anyone has any experience making something "parametric", let me know and I'll try to get the bracer to that point.