Buy and Wear a Top Hat and a Monocle

I had a rather inordinate amount of fun buying a cheap but stylish tophat, and then creating my own monocle. I used dantestoments’ method with a few adjustments… now I feel very classy.

I am actually wearing both at the moment. You can buy a relatively cheap top hat on eBay(even collapsible like mine) and you can make a cheap but pretty effective monocle very simply. Unfortunately it has no improvement on vision.

First, get a poker chip and a slinky with about the same diameter as the chip. Then, get some plastic to use as the lens; I’ve found that the clear coverings for CD cases are about perfect. Now, use a Sharpie to trace the outline of the poker chip on the CD case, then score straight lines around the circumference of the outline with a razor or hobby knife; like a bunch of tangents. It’s best to leave an eighth of an inch of plastic surrounding the innermost circumference of the circle(the area with no sharpie on it; this will serves as a place to attach the rim later. You should break off the area surrounding the lens after each score; soon you’ll have a rough circle, which you can smooth out with a file. Take some masking tape and cover both sides with it. Now, use your poker chip as a template to leave a circle of tape in the middle on either side. The lens should now be covered in tape except for the small, eighth of an inch perimeter we discussed earlier. This tape will keep the lens mostly clean throughout the gluing process.

Now that you have a lens, you’ll need a rim. Take the slinky and cut off a little more than one whole cycle of the coil. Stretch this a little bit to go around the circumference of the poker chip. You should have a gap in the coil one-eighth on an inch wide; if not, cut it to size. Now, take some kind of strong glue(Krazy Glue worked for me) and put it on one side of the rim. Take the whole poker chip-rim apparatus and place it on the lens, glue side down. Make sure you center the poker chip right over the tape. Now push down on the rim, causing it to contact the exposed perimeter; you can lift the chip off now. Hold the rim down and be sure to keep the gap in the coil. When it dries, repeat the entire process on the opposite side.

Now, you’re almost done; a monocle just isn’t complete without a chain. Take a short length of the slinky coil, about one-half inch and curve it in half. This forms a long ‘U’ that could fit the thickness of the plastic. Now pt a dab of glue in your lens gap, and attach the end of the ‘U’ to the lens. once it has dried, you can strap a string or chain to this protrusion.

And thus, a monocle.