Tyvek Wallet
An obituary for my wallet
Tyvek is one of the coolest materials I’ve worked with. It’s a fibrous sheet of plastic that by itself it doesn’t feel like much, but when made into a wallet seems to defy the rules of physics. I carried one such Tyvek wallet for over a year. The wallet was completely made by hand and all you need to make one is a sheet of Tyvek, a trusty utility blade (that later found its place inside a concealed pocket in the wallet), a ruler and some high viscosity CA glue.
- Uber cool trifold design
- Holds 10+ cards (never bothered checking its limits)
- Holds lots of money
- Waterproof (mostly)
- Two ID slots
- Concealed utility blade
- Hidden money pocket
- Stealth (literally looks like a peice of paper)
The main purpose of making this was to solve one problem: Space.
And Tyvek in some strange warping of space time encapsulates everything inside it so snugly that you can manage to loose this wallet inside your pockets. No, seriously I literally used to struggle to find it inside my pocket.
Jokes aside, this wallet was really compact, the way Tyvek folds over and wraps everything in it things don’t take any more space than they would have by their own.
Another problem the wallet was intended to solve was identification. At my university’s gates, everyone is supposed to have their ID’s checked. Those without an ID need to fill the entry register. Taking in an out this ID had always been an inconvenient task, standing in the que. You don’t want to drop your ID and most wallets with ID windows are really bulky.
So I designed the wallet to have two ID card holders, one for my college ID visible at the first opening and my government ID at the second. You could put a metro card behind this ID and it would even work at the metro station without you needing to pull it out of the wallet.
There was a third pocket on the last panel, that could securely hold my other cards.
Inside the wallet had a concealed pocket to carry a blade, this was lined with duct tape on the inside to prevent the blade from slicing through the Tyvek. This pocket was really compact and you couldn’t tell that it was even there.
One thing with Tyvek is that it doesn’t age well, over time fibers come loose. The thing develops a layer of microplastic lint, shedding away fiber by fiber. The surface picks up dirt. At its core the wallet remains as functional as ever but begins to look like crap. Tyvek is impossible to paint, the color must be added to the polymer before its extruded. Any paint applied to it will just come off the smooth slippery surface of the polyethylene fibers.
Eventually my usage pattern changed and my wallet became old, so I decided to throw it away. Currently I am using a black clip to hold my cards and money together. I plan to make a new wallet, probably based on some other designs I can find on the internet.