A journal of my first mechanical keyboard build.

Part three

Wrist wrest

When I first typed on my new mechanical keyboard (the vortex race3) I did not like the fact that the keyboard was so high above the desk. I was used to typing on my MacBook Pro and the feeling of the keys being on the same plane as my hands felt most natural to me.

So, how to solve this problem?

There are solutions you can buy. Many different kinds. There are wrist wrests in exotic woods or soft plastics, tilted ones or plain ones, cheap or expensive.

I for one am not going to pay for a wrist wrest. I instead chose the DIY route. The simplest way of making your own wrist wrest is to just roll up a towel and place it under your wrists.

I’m not gonna do that.

My first experiment was this.

A litteral plank. I put some rubber feet under it and it worked just fine. As soon as I knew that the concept worked I started to plan for the real thing. I liked the size of the plank and so I measured it. It was 10 x 30 cm. So at first I thought I should go with oak or something just as beautiful, cut it to the right size and sand it and polish it. But as I was searching the internet for the right dimensions of wood I stumbled upon bathroom tiles that were the dimensions I was looking for.

Bathroom tiles? What is he talking about?

Hold on a minute. Let me explain.

If I take two of these 10 x 30 tiles and superglue them together, I have a heavy and solid piece to base my wrist wrest on. I then put rubber feet under that and this is what I got.

I was mighty pleased with myself and immediately posted this to Reddit.

Now some of the fine folks on Reddit were really nice and some even though it was a great idea. Some were a bit more sarcastic. Like this comment:

Now you only need to put tubes into it and feed through your water cooling loop. (like a floor heater)

And the nice gentleman was, of course, right. It was cold and it was really sticky. But I liked everything else about it, the solid feel and the heft. So I decided to try and wrap a piece if leather around it. I have a friend that works as a wood shop teacher and she gave me a piece of leather and some glue.

It was super simple and I had the tiles wrapt in no more than 5 minutes. I let it dry over night and then I rubbed the top and sides with a mixture of coffee and olive oil. I did this to darken the leather. It turned out really good and it smells great!

Not so pretty from this angle, but I hardly ever look at it up side down. (I’m seriously considering building a new one just so I can make it pretty from all sides…)

OK, thats enough of me rambling about wrist wrests. In the next episode of this journal I will be talking about artisans. A fascinating topic if there ever was one!