Cool Keyboard

[freak]

I seen a keyboard on the TV show warehouse 13, it is on syfy. has anyone else seen the keyboard, it is a steampunk keyboard. It goes for more then I want to spend but it is cool.

[dbev]

It looks like a19th century writing machine... and it's very cool!!!

[SarahG]

They're actually not hard to build as I understand it, just time consuming.

The tricky part is finding a USB keyboard that would be easy to convert.

I've thought about trying to make one from scratch using a newer keyboard (i.e. one with various function keys), I think you might.... might be able to get by in using adhesive to stick one of the typewriter keys over each specific normal key with some kind of thin layer of black felt (?) to hide the modern keyboard underneith.

Then it would be a simple matter of making a brass frame to mount the keyboard itself in- which would be the easiest part.

But to get it more period correct looking you'd ideally need a way to make a cloth-covered data cable (similar to the cloth covered cords used on old lamps). I'm not sure how you'd do this, perhaps if you could find old enough cloth/fiber electrical spaghetti, but that might not be flexible enough.

It would also be pretty cool if you could find a way to make the keys light up, like modern keyboards do- that way you can use it in the dark. I suspect if you made the key labels out of a thin strip of plastic instead of paper, and then put an LED under each one... the letter for each key would "glow" whatever color the plastic is.

[Hara_Juku Tgirl]

Kewl looking keyboard (looks heavy tough)! Looks like an old typewriter key/tabs. They should add shorthand keys such as lmao, lol, w/e etc. I think they might come up with that one day!



~Kisses.

HTG

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

$1200 to have made