Day 18 — Why I Love Mechanical Keyboards
I believe hobbies are great sources of joy, inspiration, and connection with other people. They reflect a lot about us— our character, our stories, and our potential. With the extra time, we accidentally found out while being stuck in our homes, hobbies are great ways for us to have fun and hopefully learn a few new things.
Here is one hobby that I found a couple of months ago and let me attempt to share with you why I love it as a beginner to the hobby. Hopefully, if you are looking to pick up a new hobby, you will find this one interesting. Yes, you read the title, it’s mechanical keyboards.
What is a Mechanical Keyboard?
— maybe the first question you ask if you are not familiar with keyboards (like me a couple months ago).
The simple answer is: — A mechanical keyboard is a type of keyboard that has mechanical switches and here is an example of a mechanical switch.
Mechanical switches are typically made of a few parts: (from left) top housing, stem, spring, contact leaf, and bottom housing.
When a key is pressed, the stem pushes the spring down so the two metal contacts connect, registering your key press to the keyboard’s circuitry and therefore to your computer.
And here is an example of how it looks when all the keycaps are removed from a keyboard, revealing all the mechanical switches underneath.
Including the switches, these are five typical components that can be found in almost every mechanical keyboard: —
Now that you have a basic understanding of a mechanical keyboard, let’s dive into the fun and even more nerdy stuff!
Why I love Mechanical Keyboards?
I have one simple reason, that is customizability. I love that with enough knowledge, time, and money, we can customize virtually anything and build a mechanical keyboard that perfectly fits one’s desire. Yes, there are companies and independent creators that design and manufacture custom parts and components for us to purchase, customize, modify, and build our perfect keyboard.
Most people are content with built-in keyboards in laptops or affordable mass-produced keyboards because “they simply get the job done”. However, I think if we can find keyboards that we truly enjoy using, it can drastically improve our experience in both our work and leisure since they are such an integral part of our daily lives.
Mechanical keyboards are one of those hobbies that have many different aspects and different people like it for different reasons. Without going too deep, here I would like to focus on my favorite aspect that I love about the hobby, that is: —
Artisan Keycaps
Artisan keycaps are beautiful ideas turned into keycaps that you can put on your keyboards. With these keycaps, you can turn your mechanical keyboards into unique pieces of art that you can appreciate and enjoy using every day. It’s best to let pictures tell the story. Here are some examples from some of my favorite artisan keycap makers.
I am a huge fan of great art and I always want to support creators and artists who are able to create things that speak to my heart. The makers that I mentioned above are definitely ones that I support. Honestly, I am a little sad that I did not discover this hobby sooner and I have missed out on some of the pieces that are no longer available.
Patience is a Huge Part of the Game
That brings me to the “patience” aspect of the hobby. Like almost every other component in the custom mechanical keyboard scene (i.e. keyboard case and keycaps), they are typically very limited to small quantities and require long periods of time to get made, ranging from three months to one year and sometimes years. That is because generally these ideas are created by passionate independent creators who do not have the manufacturing and distributing abilities like the big companies do. Hence, they need financial support in advance (group buys a.k.a crowd-funding/pre-orders) from people who are willing to spend money to support their ideas.
Since the products are limited, it also created an aftermarket scene on places like the mechmarket for people who are seeking their desired components that are no longer available.
Clearly, it’s just the tip of the iceberg
As I mentioned, there are many other fascinating aspects of the hobby and artisan keycaps were one effective gateway for me to start with. As I now patiently wait for my artisan keycaps to arrive, I have no worries as there are so many things to the hobby that could keep me occupied for days and months. Here is a quick list:
1. Finding the Perfect Keyboards — here are some that I am interested in:
2. Lubricating/Lubing my switches so that they sound and type better
I want my keyboards to sound like this:
By doing this:
3. Continue to consume more contents and learn more about the hobby
There is one content creator that almost everyone in the hobby would recommend. That is Taeha Types. He does an amazing job in explaining the basics in the video below:
And I really enjoy watching him streaming himself building keyboards, doing typing tests, and dropping useful knowledge with his chat.
That’s all from me for now
It was fun for me putting the pieces together in this article and it would serve as a good snapshot of my current state in the hobby for me to look back at in the future. Here is a couple of photos of my current setup: —
Thanks for reading and good luck in your journey in finding the perfect keyboard.
This article is part of the HENNGE Advent Calendar 2020. An Advent calendar is a special calendar used for counting down the days till Christmas. HENNGE Advent Calendar 2020 presents one article by one HENNGE member per day for 25 days until Christmas, 2020.
