A friend of mine from Kent State (hi jen) had one of these cool 550 paracord square braids on her keychain that interested me (a couple of years ago), but she didn't know how to make it, since it was a gift from someone she knew in the army. Having missed that particular class during my prior service, I was a bit bummed but didn't worry too much about it since I was out and all. Once I got called back, I tried to find how to do it on the Internet, but couldn't find anything. However, upon arriving in Iraq I found that most of the unit had the same woven cord braids for their earplug cases (which in the guard are typically worn with BDUs/DCUs and attached with black dog tag chain). I asked one of the LTs in the unit to show me how to do it and where he'd learned how to do it. He showed me (in about 5 minutes - it's simple once somebody shows you), and told me he'd learned it in boy scouts. Anyway, since I'm all about sharing knowledge via the Internet, I spent a couple of minutes with my camera and created a quick step-by-step article on how to do this yourself, if you ever care to do so.

How to make a 550 cord square braid keychain fob / pistol lanyard