Originally designed as meaningless rank known as collar candy I repurposed them for the Captains Rank of the Lucidity
I ordered some gears off of Ebay and they were smaller then I expected. I basically had two options: make them pips like in StarTrek, or glue them together and make them clusters. Clusters turned out to be a much better choice for stability anyway, but I didn’t know that at the time, it was just an esthetically choice.
The way I got them to stick together was to use a compound called JB Weld. If you’ve never used this stuff, you’re missing out, it’s great. You take a black and a white chemical and mix them into a gray one. Once this stuff dries it never comes off, strong strong stuff.
The gears have an axle running through both sides. I lined the gears up on a peace of cardboard, moved them, put the glue down, then carefully placed them back down on the glue so the teeth lined up. here’s a quick before shot of the work area before the glue is added.
I got the slow setting type so it takes about 4 hours to be ready, but once it is I can feel confident that it wont come apart.
Front
Back
After that I picked up some pin backs at the craft store and used more JB weld to permanently stick them on. At first I didn’t think this was going to hold well, but I was pleasantly surprised with how sturdy it is.