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I got stuck leading up to Father’s day and I had no idea what to make. In the end I took a trip to the golf store to see if something caught my eye when I saw these:

A divot tool and line up…thing, with magnetic golf ball markers.

I fooled around for them for a bit and it seemed like the Pitchfix logo was just a 3D sticker (and no I didn’t peel them up or damage them in the store haha). I wasn’t sure which type of marker holder my dad might actually like – hat clip, divot tool, pocket coin…thing (I still have no idea what that poker chip type one is) so I bought all of them.

This is what I came home with:

My dad does a lot of business on the course so I thought I’d make him a bunch of giveaway ones with his company’s logo on it.

So first things first – measuring. When I bought these in the store I made sure they were the same size.

It turns out they were indeed easy to remove stickers. I used some alcohol to remove the sticky residue and then they were ready to go.
I made a design for each child (aka me and my siblings) with the coordinates of their current resident cities.

THE ACRYLIC MARKERS

I also cut and engraved a few acrylic designs to attach to the neon markers.
I used two part epoxy and UV resin to attach the acrylic designs. The glue does show through the back a bit, but from the top (the only way you’ll ever really see these) it looked just fine. I particularly like the look of the cut out designs with the neon orange showing through as these are two of corporate colors and it has nice contrast.

THE WOODEN MARKERS

Finally, time to hit the laser. I would share these settings, but they ended up not being great, so I’ll skip it for now. I cut these from a scrap of solid walnut.
When they first came out of the forge they seemed like they engraved deep enough (I tried to keep it a bit shallower and used my settings for insetting MOP). The heavier areas worked great, but the very delicate numbers needed a more powerful engrave.
This picture is a bit blurry (it didn’t look quite as bad as these photos) but you can see the letters aren’t intense enough.
All of these are magnetic and interchangeable.

WHERE TO GET THE MATERIALS

If you’re interested in making something similar, check out these stainless steel blanks and magnetic hat clips. There is also some cheaper plastic markers if you want to make markers with the little post/pin. There are also some multi-colored stemmed markers.

TIPS:
1. Go with a thinner material for your laser cutting. Markers are generally pretty thin. I didn’t have anything thin enough, I would go with something 1/16″ or 1/8″ in thickness given the choice.
2. Avoid MDF core plywood, if it gets wet it swells and warps. You never know if these will have to be used in damp grass.

Steel blanks which will easily attach to a magnetic hat clip
Magnetic Hat Clip blanks
The plastic markers
These markers come in a variety of high visibility colors.

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?

Obligatory code plug. If you found this post helpful and you plan to buy a Glowforge you can use my code for a discount: https://glowforge.us/r/QHDONFXB

And finally, if you’d like to be updated on posts like these in the future you can sign up for my email list. You will only receive an email if there is new content, and only once weekly in that case:

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