In this instructable, I will be showing you how to make a hollowed out deck of cards that can be used to hide small valuables. This is a very simple project it requires only one tool and just a handful of household objects, plus an hour or two of your time. This project was one of the very first projects I ever did, around the age of 10 I had some DS games that I wanted to hide from my siblings. I found a book (Mini Weapons Of Mass Destruction, AMAZING books on little projects 100% recommend) that showed someone hollowing out the inside of a book and hiding stuff in there, I immediately grabbed the biggest book I could find and started cutting out the inside of the pages. 10 minutes and 20 pages later I realized that this was gonna take a lot longer then I had expected, so I abandoned the book and continued to search for a new idea. That's when I stumbled upon a guy who had hollowed out a deck of cards, I found the nearest deck of cards and started cutting. 1 hour and a deck of cards later I was holding a hollowed out deck of cards. That idea has stuck with me and when I saw the Safe And Secure contest this memory came back and I decided to make an instructable on it. Enjoy.

Step 1: TOOLS/SUPPLIES

So the plan here is to take a regular deck of cards and turn it into a secret compartment for hiding valuables but in order to do that, you are gonna need a few basic tools and supplies.

--TOOLS--

-X-ACTO knife ( You could even use scissors if you don't have an X-ACTO knife)

--SUPPLIES--

-Full Deck of Cards (Duh)

-Stick of Glue (The kind I used was Elmer's school glue)

-Rubber Band (This is not necessary but it makes it look nicer)

-1-2 Hours

Step 2: Cutting the Deck

The first thing you need to do is to take out eight cards from the deck, these will form the top and bottom. Next, you need to start cutting out the inside of the cards, most cards I've seen have a little border around the edge and I cut just inside these borders. It's not super important that these are all the exact same size as long as they are roughly the same size. You need to do this for all the cards, excluding the eight you took out.

Step 3: Stacking the Deck

Once you have all the cards cut out you need to take the eight cards that you didn't cut from before and glue three of them together and then glue the other five together. The stack of five is gonna be your bottom and the stack of three is gonna be your top. Take your stack of five and apply some glue around the border and carefully place one of the cut cards on top. Carefully apply glue and cut cards on top of each other until you are all out of cut cards, once you're out take your stack of three and bend it in the middle cross-ways and apply glue only to one half of the stack. place the stack of three on top of the stack so that only half of it is glued down and the other half is free to bend up and down. Place a couple of heavy books on top of this while it drys, something like the LOTR series should be plenty heavy.

Step 4: Finished

Once your deck is all glued together it's done, you could add a rubber band to add a little more detail and also to hold the flap down and keep your stuff inside. This has approximately 3 cubic inches of volume and can be used to hold lots of loose change, keys, or other valuables. I think it turned out well and when it's closed, you can hardly tell that its not a real deck of cards.

Step 5: Final Tips

As you can see the bend mark in the middle is pretty obvious, while I don't think it would give away your hiding spot, it still doesn't look natural. Some of the commenters have offered up their solutions and I decided to list them here. The first solution, instead of gluing half of the top card down and bending it up you could leave the top card un-glued and just hold it down with the rubber band, thus removing the bend mark. The second solution, you could have the bottom of the deck open up so that the bend mark will be on the bottom instead of the top. The third solution split the deck in the middle and drill two small holes in the corner and fit a small dowel in them so that the deck opens from the middle instead of the top or bottom, giving it a more natural look. Again I would like to thank the commenters for these ideas, these ideas are creative improvements/solutions to make this deck look even more realistic. If you enjoyed this instructable please consider following me on Instagram for updates on my future projects. Thank you.

https://www.instagram.com/kirkwood_creations/

Runner Up in the
Safe and Secure Challenge

12 Comments

EdenR3

4 years ago

When I made one I saved a few cards for the top and drilled a small hole in the edge of the bottom section and put a small nut in it and countersunk a hole in the top cards I saved for a tiny bolt and then It makes the lid so you can rotate it to open and to hold the other end closed I did the same type of holes and put tiny earth magnets. Then glue a fresh card on top to conceal the holes. I'd like to figure out a way to do it with the double deck of cards that come in the slide out drawer type of box.

frarugi87

Tip 4 years ago

If you flip the cards deck, thus leaving the bent card on the bottom (or better, glue the bottom card rather than the top one), you would have had a much nicer effect IMHO

Even if, probably, I would have separated the deck at the middle, rather than at top or bottom, and then drilled two small holes at the opposite corners to put some dowels to keep the deck aligned. This way it becomes more "natural"

bigo72

Well, what I did if it was my instructable: cover card not bended and not glued, just closed with the elastic rubber. More natural and not suspicious. Very good idea, anyway.