The ALL-METAL Keyboard

Two years ago we brought you the world's ugliest

keyboard

and a year later we built our own

keyboard

from scratch. How could we further improve our keyboard game by building the most expensive keyboard we can, all out of

metal

? What we're doing today is pretty similar to our last keyboard build, except for one key difference, as far as we know, no one has built an all-

metal

keyboard, so where to start with something like that? Well, all metal parts, of course, start with a foundation to build on. And that's where our friends at Dixie Mech come in, they sent over one of the first prototypes of their new Bower keyboard chassis with a custom battle-stressed Cerakote paint job.

This thing is CNC machined from 6063 aluminum so it's incredibly heavy, has a 65 design, and is absolutely sextastic aside from a slight omission of the Windows key which gives ah those are for the boomers anyway in the words of Dixie the Windows key is your worst enemy and while I personally disagree I'm certainly willing to give this a try now they are mainly known for their gorgeous sets of keys and accessories so we'll see how it holds up as a first 4a keyboard design and with a retail price of US$460, I sincerely hope it's absolutely amazing, although this is pretty crazy. not even the most expensive part of this build, it's about time we address this.

Here is a complete set of completely custom brass keycaps made by Salvin. Each of these keys starts out as a solid piece of brass that is abrasive blast machined and eventually waxed. -Coated to prevent oxidation, this is truly the ultimate keyboard shine. Here guys, the only way to go one step further is to make them with gold or something. It literally took days of machine time to make 66 of these caps and Not only are they gold in color but also in mass, these things are incredibly heavy, your run of the mill space war, where did my space bar go?

It'll weigh about 8 grams, this one weighs 40 grams, so the total mass of these caps was actually an important consideration in our decision making process when we were trying to figure out which key switches to use, we tested cherry switches extensively gataron and kaiwa and finally we decided here, come on, these black gadaron here, their greater actuation strength helps balance our heavy caps and their linear travel is silky smooth, but not smooth enough. I mean, this is supposed to be excessive exercise, right, ladies and gentlemen? So we and of course Colin went ahead and purchased two different lubricants from Apex. keyboards and thoroughly opened and lubricated each switch and stabilizer to make them even smoother and quieter.

By the way, if you want to see more switch tests, definitely subscribe because we have a completely blind switch test video that they won. I don't want to get lost for now though look at this, here's an unlubricated one, here's the lubricated one, okay, they don't sound that different, whatever the point, it feels smoother, so with the addition of where they went, ah , yes, these cherry screws. on stabilizers, they're all here, so all that's left is to assemble the board, let's turn on the soldering iron and get to work, isn't that a bad soldering job? That's actually pretty consistent now that we have it open, you can see the Type C Port on the inside of the gazebo case here, so now all that's left is the final assembly, so let's put on our midplate on the base and I think the screws are right here, then we're going to put the top plate on top of it. and let's put all our strong key caps on, okay, so let's fix all this now, yeah, oh, you're going to.

Just stay here and look pretty. So actually, I'm going to take this opportunity to show everyone. Nice options we have for accent keys like the escape key, so Salvin actually made up some different ones for us. There's a man with a Dixie keycap. These things are heavy and there is a small one. Look how good it looks. What is the printing process he is using? this is just screen printing or whatever, they're laser engraved, oh yeah, so they're cerakoted, yeah you can feel it, yeah, you made a color for us that's amazing, how much is each key, each key, like, yeah, 50 Few dollars, you weren't kidding when you said the kit wasn't the most expensive part, it really isn't, it's like two big keys.

Gotta start with the LTT key yeah so here's something to Keep in mind guys the actuation force of these keys is 50 grams and for most of them we don't expect that to be a big deal like the typical escapement, your w, your asd, all that good and important stuff, the space bar, we're a little worried about what I mentioned before, but this is a 40 gram wrench, which means this could end up being basically like a hair trigger like 10 grams 10 grams of force. Can I try this before we finish everything? I have to try this, right? so if I like my wasd, there's nothing there, you barely have to touch it, look at this, look at this, look, look at this, you guys should be able to figure out that it can barely get up like the response force is so small, oh , how poor. space bar, have you ever made a space bar before?

Oh, I'm sure it does, but there has to be a little more forethought. I think we can probably find some springs to attach the stabilizers or flip the switch back on. I don't know at this point, but we're just going to make it happen, you know, when we can adjust the other ones, although yeah, the other one is great, it has a nice sound, okay, let's hit these keys, yeah, everyone. true, I mean, since they're not labeled, it doesn't really matter what order they go in, but something to keep in mind is that they actually have different heights, so placing them at least in the correct row is very, very important because the The keyboard itself is tilted a bit, but a lot of the tilt that gives you that comfortable typing posture actually comes from the heights of the keys themselves.

The tolerances on these things are actually due to how we attach them, so if you look inside the key, you'll see I'll see there are threads and then it gets slotted or I don't know if it loads before the hand, but it screws into a fitting and it holds on and that's how you machine it right yeah so these are things that grab onto the stems like that yeah there's a little bit of serration so these are row two of cherries so row two of cherries , so row one cherries, two, three, four, cubes five, like I'm not even the biggest keyboard nerd at all.

Luke, here today, we should, uh, we should show you, I mean, I'd have to clean it after you can just put it in the oven, you mean the dishwasher, the oven, yeah, like when they sterilize things in the oven, oh, I see sterilization , uh, no, there's a word for him to be in that and no man him. he doesn't want to have kids so that's more of your thing and i got it oh it's starting to take shape this excites me now one thing that's interesting is probably because those stretch marks are actually a little hard to push in, i thought it's possible that let's have screwed this one up and put the wrong row in, but no, you just have to give it to them to put it in and I mean, for the record, the keys work, there's another c4 and I need one more c3, am I out?

No, I got it, boom, how much does this thing weigh? Like you could kill a man with this. Okay, Linus, you want to give it away. Not really, I'll give it away. I was going to say that I thought we had to send the keyboard. Oh no. the keys go backwards, I mean literally weigh them, okay wait, first we have to guess, do we need to type it? Yes, yes, yes, we have it, we have it right here. You have a marker. Okay, what did you say? 3 100 grams 3 100 grams I said 2 kilos, okay, so one barely measures a kilo, yes, but that is a full 104 key and this is plastic, well, this one has a metal plate here that is thin, it is basically a sheet metal, um. and then this is a 65, oh my god, I'm so far away, I think, oh, you know what I'm waiting for, oh, we both overlooked it, it has to be just the density because it feels like you lift it, like you wait for it . these two and tell me it doesn't feel like three times more no, it's the density, it feels harder, it's stiff, like that, I mean, okay, keyboard, don't get me wrong, but that's how to have. did you try to type oh no this is the first time it's fully assembled okay cool do you want to like a typing test yeah right hit me hit me with that and time nine words okay right from the beginning what do you think?

I'm not a big fan of the textured home row. I was actually having a little trouble finding my way back to it, so I would definitely do a different style of starting row. The space bar actually didn't bother me as much as it did me. I thought I found the slightly rougher texture of the keys to be a little harder to glide on. You might prefer slightly more rounded corners. Actually, yes, you can put a nice padding around the edge. I've never liked a linear key switch keyboard. It took me about three hours to write on a cloud.

I really like the switches. I spent a lot of time trying to decide which switches I wanted to run and the black ones weren't just suggested in testing with those key switch testers. do you put o-rings on it or is it just a soft knife, as part of the nature of the switch, properly lubricated like the sound, it's loud but not annoying a bit, yeah, still better than the blues, oh oh wait, well yeah , it is not. It's not unpleasant at all and I thought the keys would be very cold but they've gotten hot oh yeah no, surprisingly it's not like that because the thing is also that, like the feeling of heat on the tips of your fingers, where you have calluses, it's not as much as if I put the inside of my wrist it's cold yeah, but if I put my fingers on it it's fine no big deal not that I'm saying not that I'm trying to convince you to run out and buy one of these keyboards uh , all metal edition, so the total bill for this would be around 2500 to 3000 US dollars, yes probably closer to 2500, this is it guys, this is the maximum keyboard, I'm glad I experienced it. but I understand why I have to return the parts because I believe that no man is really worthy of owning a keyboard like this.

We are not worthy. Also, we'll have a link to one of our other fun keyboard videos below. uh, why don't we DIY the keyboard? Yeah, throw it down there guys, go check it out and as always, subscribe if you want to see more great content here, lastly, the tech tips should give you some nails for us to hammer in. two by four oh I don't think dixie likes that no