Keyboard
My keyboard design was heavily inspired by Datamancer, which can be seen in the links section. I hope mine turns out as beautiful as his do. I'm not trying to copy, just getting inspired.
I browsed around on eBay, of course. It seems that there's a jewelry-making fad that involves typewriter keys so the bidding can get pretty fierce. I have an opinion about the tackiness of this jewelry, but I won't express it here. I mean really. Maybe an intial if you wear letters around your neck or possibly a bracelet spelling out your kid's name, but come on. Shift keys, tab stops and semicolons? Whatever.
Starting out, I won three different sets of keys from a Remington, a Smith-Corona and a Royal. Any keys I don't use as they are will be remade into keys I need like F1, F2, Print Screen, arrows, etc. and the leftovers will be sold on eBay when I'm finished.
I have to say here that I don't approve of hacking up an antique just to get parts from it. If a 60, 80 or 100 year old typewriter still works, it should be preserved. Someday there won't be any left. So we don't use them anymore, that's not the point. Alright, I have to admit I didn't preserve any betamax tapes and I no longer have any music on cassette. But someone somewhere should. Since I'm buying these keys on eBay and they've already been removed, the damage is done even if I'm contributing to economic forces that will perpetuate the kill-off of antique typewriters. That's the same reason buying fur encourages killing of cute furry animals. But anyway, I draw the line between living things and obsolete machines. I can't do too much about it except not use antique keys on my keyboard but I don't want to do that. If that makes me an irresponsible preservationist, so be it. I am sorry. At least these keys will live on in a working creation rather than gathering dust in an attic somewhere.
My first set of keys arrived today. I decided to use as many in their original state as possible. They look great without me doing anything artsy to them and I want to be as good a preservationist as I possibly can after my little rant up above.
I like clicky keyboards and I always have: the kind that bugs your neighbor in the next cubicle at work. I think I type faster on a clicky. You KNOW when a key has been pressed and you don't have to press as hard. There are pages out there for people who love clicky keyboards for their own sake. For this project a clicky, noisy keyboard will replicate a bit of the sound you used to get when typing on a typewriter. The king of the clickies is the IBM Model M. Not only do they sound great but they are durable and last for decades! I finally found one with a PS2 jack and that's what I'm typing on right now (the cheap disposable quiet one is leaning against the wall under my desk in case I need it later while I work on the project).
With only one set of keys which is not the set I plan to use for letters, I decided to lay out my number pad and see what else could be useful. The thing about old typewriters is that they don't have a number 1 key because you'd use a lower-case "l" instead. The shift characters above the numbers are slightly different nowadays, not to mention Escape, Control, Alt and F1, etc. There are some keys I'm just going to have to make myself. There also is no Enter, because you had that bar sticking out to move the roller back over when you got to the end of a line. Re-fashioning keys is going to be a lot of work, which is another reason to use them as-is when possible.
Just a quick note on my design ethic here. The letters and most of the "typing" keys are going to be Smith-Corona. They're black and have a classy Times New Roman font. I also really love the cursive "Floating Shift" key. The keys that are only found on computers are going to be off-white Remington keys. The ones I have to create myself will NEVER match perfectly so I'm going to make them in a third style but at least they'll all match each other. The keyboard I'm using now has some grey and some white keys, so color-coding isn't that far out.
I tried to find a flat piece of foam packing but the best I could come up with is a relatively keyboard-size cardboard box that I could jab the keys into. It works for layout purposes. I used an "I" where the "1" should be. There was a shift-lock in the set which I'll use for a number lock. The slash key has a question mark above it which could get distracting so I brought back the days of long division by turning the "L" on its side. The asterisk for multiplication is a fully modern invention that I don't wholly approve, so I put the "X" there. I do have a zero key but the "O" looks cleaner and more centered so I might use that instead.
I can hear what you're thinking. "You have " # $ % _ & * and ( on the number keys that don't do anything." You are correct to comment on that. Who cares? It adds antique character. I always leave Number Lock on and I never use the arrows or Home Or Pg Dn functions on the number pad. I only use it for... that's right, numbers. Call me lazy but making the number keys myself woudn't be as cool and it will add to the work load.
So far, so good but I don't have a "-" for subtraction. There is one, but it has "3/4" above it (yes, there used to be keys for commonly used fractions) and the "3/4" is distracting considering that it won't be used. I would like to turn the "I" on it's side but I've already used it for the missing number 1. I might need a second set that matches this one so I can finish the number pad. It looks like I'll have to make a "+" and an Enter so I'll leave those for later.
Moving on, I just sorted through the remaining keys and picked out ideas. We don't really READ Alt and Ctrl each time we press one of them, we just need to know which is which. That's a good use for "C" and "A" except that I'm going to need two of each. That confirmed my idea to find another matching set of keys.
Once I had all three sets of keys I laid out more of my cardboard and it really started to look like a keyboard:
The top row of numbers is trouble because, as they say, change is inevitable. The shift characters above the 3,4 5,7 and 0 are the same now as they were 100 years ago. The 1,2, 6, 8 and 9 are different. In order for the whole row of numbers to match visually, I'm going to have to make them all myself! Aaaargh! Oh, well, worse things could happen. I'll post more about making my own keys later. I just had to vent.
Most of the keys are still under consideration but the ones I'm absolutely certain about are the A-Z keys. From the first moment I saw the Smith-Corona set it has been the ONLY set I wanted. So those are the keys I'll start hacking up first. As I plan this, it's going to be a process of several steps.
1. The keys of the Model M pop right off and pop back on without a lick of trouble. I think most keyboards do this but I've never been brave enough before for fear that I'd shag it up. That's the good news. Once I could examine the plastic keys I made some discoveries. First, there's an outer shell with the characters printed on but this can be removed to expose a blank key underneath. I'm having a disturbing flashback to my high school typing teacher, Mrs. Smith (We called her Mrs. Smith-Corona the Typing Nazi).
The blank key is made from a cylinder inside a zigarat. No need for Wikipedia; a zigarat is a flat-topped step pyramid. I've drawn you a very rough cross section here:
The blue cylinder just happens to be the exact same size as an antique typewriter key. But these beautiful keys glued to the tops of a plastic trapezoid-shaped modern keys would look STOOOOOPID! The red part is what I need to remove. All the functional parts of the plastic key are contained in the blue cylinder part, which is good. I can get rid of the red bits with my Dremel tool. The only bad part is that there are 103 keys on my keyboad and I'm going to have to Dremel each one. I'm starting to see just how long this will take and how much plastic dust there's going to be on my patio.
I learned a bit about keyboarding from Jake von Slatt at Steampunk Workshop, specifically how to cut the skirts off the key caps quickly, efficiently and without so much plastic dust. Thank you Jake! I haven't actually tried this yet but when I'm at the key-cutting stage it will just be a quick trip to Lowe's to get me rolling. It's a good thing I already have a drill press! I think I'll wait for warmer weather so I can do this outdoors. Just to be safe!
2. The next thing I'll have to do is make the backs of my antique keys flat. (Thanks again to Jake von Slatt and the link above) I can get very close to it with a pair of bolt cutters but then I'll need to use the Dremel to grind the remaining stub until the key will lay flat.
I used to really worry about shagging up the plastic bits of the keys, but I had a fortunate bit of bad luck. See, I had one Model M keyboard for my steampunk project and another one to use in the meantime. The one I was using had some kind of accident. It's weird! The indicator lights in the upper right corner flash exactly in sync with the drive activity light on my PC. I don't know why. The computer boots up just fine but as soon as I type even ONE keystroke, it locks up and freezes. It appears that a couple pins in the PS/2 connector have gone missing. That's the really odd part about it; it worked fine one morning. I shut down the computer and went to work. When I returned home I had this weird problem. So now I have an essentially DEAD Model M that can donate replacement keys if I phuq any up during cutting or gluing. The only real tragedy is that I am now using a keyboard I really don't like while I shop for yet another Model M on eBay. My next one will DEFINITELY have a removable cable since that's the part most likely to cause a problem.
3. Once all the grinding and cutting is done, I'll have to paint each plastic cylinder matte black so it will be nearly invisible in the finished keyboard. I could use spray paint but I think enamel model paint will be more durable.
4. Once I pop all the black round plastic cylinders back onto the keyboard I'll mix up some epoxy and begin sticking the flat smooth antique keys to the tops of the cylinders. I have to do it on the keyboard so the characters won't be glued on at odd angles. The only key I WANT to put on crooked is the L that I'm using for a long-division sign.
I'll continue with some new pictures as soon as I have done some keys, which probably won't be until spring 2009 when I can spend some time on the patio with some power tools without freezing off my delicate little cajones.
The surface under the typewriter keys is going to be a brass plate (a kickplate for a door, actually) and to avoid shagging it up, I will need to drill holes in it very accurately. To do this I need a pattern that I can transfer onto the brass. My first idea was to tape paper to it and make a rubbing with a crayon, something most of us did in grade-school art.
The paper for this had to be thin enough for a rubbing yet sturdy enough not to tear when holes are drilled in it. I found just such paper and did my rubbing tonight.
For practice, so I don't shag up the brass plate, I'm going to drill holes in a thin piece of wood or possibly some good stiff cardboard. I'll soon know if the holes line up or not. In another fortunate accident, I was riding a bus and one of the advertisements had fallen down. It was printed on thin yet sturdy plastic, so I rolled it up and took it with me when I disembarked. It's just about the right size to use as a practice keyboard backing.