It might just be the dozen-odd years I was spent chained to the wall in my grandmother’s basement, a stain on the orange shag carpet my only friend, but I have a natural affinity for slapping wood panneling on any gadget I have. Especially Apple products.
One of the companies that has helped me in this quest of mine is RAW BKNY, a Brooklyn-based woodworking and laser-etching shop which has put out some really bitching wood veneers for the iPhone and Macbook.
Now they’ve got a new Kickstarter, and I’m super psyched about it: how’d you like wooden keys for your Mac?
Inspired by a keyboard design they saw made out of moss and wood, RAW’s wooden Mac keys have been in the works since October 2012. And now they’re ready for showtime.
What took so long? Well, for one thing, Apple actually makes a surprising number of different key sizes. The 11-inch MacBook Air, for example, has two rows of keys that are differently sized in the 13-inch MacBook Air. There’s difference between the Numeric Keyboard and the Wireless Keyboard. And so on. That’s a lot of keys to design and prototype: one size most definitely does not fit all.
Additionally, there was the matter of installation. There’s over 100 keys on a standard Apple Numeric Keyboard, and each key veener not only needs to have the proper affixative to stay capped on after thousands or even millions of keypresses, but RAW BKNY needed to come up with a tool that guaranteed a perfect installation of the caps every time.
That accomplished, RAW BKNY’s wooden keys are now available on Kickstarter. For $40, you can get wooden keys for your Mac of choice in either bamboo or rosewood, along with the installation kit. For $10 more, RAW BKNY will laser etch the space bar with a message of your choice.
RAW BKNY does fine craftsman work, and I’m a big fan of what they’re doing here. Look for our review of their wooden keys soon, but having tested a prototype, I can say I’m really happy with them. If you’ve got my same fetish for wood panelling, $40 is a real steal.
Source: Kickstarter
