Steampunk Laptop post #1

For expediency sakes we will call this a steampunk laptop. I feel like I'm jumping on a bandwagon somehow. But really this project is already six months in, and im just late to the
publicity portion of this project. Don't know what steampunk is? Look it up.

Basicly the idea is to make things that are high tech look like they are fancy and hand crafted. Combine the benefits of modern mass production with the aesthetic of high end craftsmanship.

Also its fun to make things.

The project so far started off when the hinge of my laptop (ibook g4) broke and left me with a floppy but functional computer. Rather than just repair the computer with original parts, I decided to try and fancy it up. I made a wooden case in the manner of campaign furniture from the 19th century. That process i will detail later on. At the moment i have a functional laptop encased in and veneered in wood. The keyboard doesn't "work", visually. A square of white plastic in the middle of dark wood was just weird.

I had started a keyboard (inspired by vonSlatt and Datamancer) a while back, but never got beyond some basic construction. Once i realized that the new wood case left just enough room for typewriter keys I started figuring out how to take the computer further.



The bezel I made, cut from a piece of veneer. I used a photocopy of the keyboard as a drilling guide. A Freud bit made nice clean holes, large enough for the keys to fit cleanly.

Double checking the alignment of the bezel. The photo copy was not exactly 1:1 scale. But the amount of play between the drill bit size and the typewriter key size mean it doesnt seem to be an issue. I havn't yet re-cut the holes for the space bar or oversized and square keys.



Here is the first row of keys, before getting here I photocopied the keyboard to get a reference for the Bezel I am also making and then painted it matte black. After the first row of measuring each key off the edge of the case i realized the Bezel was lining up well so i just centered the keys and things got a lot faster. The print out is for reference, the epoxy i used is fairly slow, so i had a chance to reposition in case i made a mistake.



Further along, with some of the custom keys laid out. Note the larger and square keys that I had to figure out as a went.