It took forever but it’s kinda sorta semi-official that we will soon™ release licensed Tolkien keyboards, keycaps, desktop mat, …

It’s not clear yet how much stuff we are going to do, but I would like to start from a few sets of Elven and –this time also– Dwarven keycaps. Both being composed by extremely complicated glyphs we can’t do double-shot, so this is going to be MT3 profile in PBT material with dye-sublimated legends. It is somehow limiting in the color selection (we can’t use light on dark schemes) but we can use any sort of iconography from the Tolkien world.

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UPDATE: now live on Drop!

When we designed the MT3 keycap profile we had very specific vintage keyboards in mind. One of them was the IBM 3277 (and the whole 32xx series). So before venturing any further in colorful and extravagant color schemes I had to honor the 3277 by dedicating an MT3 set to it.

Hence I’m proud to introduce to you simply “3277”, the next MT3 double-shot to be produced in the coming months.

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It was March 16th –basically 12 years ago in the time of covid– when I first told you that Susuwatari was going production. I was not happy about it, we weren’t ready and I had no trust in a factory that to that point gave only disappointment.

Well, when I’m wrong I’m wrong. Today I got the production prototypes for Susuwatari… and to my great surprise they are pretty darn good.

If you follow me you know that I’m an annoyingly perfectionist and I’m never 100% happy with my work. Well, this time I’m moderately optimist. I have no clue how the manufacturer pulled this off after the countless low quality tests we made in past year, but I’m not gonna complain.

Of course there’s something I’d still like to fix. Colors are still not a perfect match of what I had in mind and a couple of keys (not important ones) would need some retouching, but anyway they are ready for production and shipping as they are.

So warm up a special place in your collection, Susuwatari is coming to you real soon!

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Let’s start with the good news. /dev/tty2 is finally live! I thought it was “ready to buy” but it turned out Drop started with a preorder page. But there shouldn’t be delays, this is the third time we make these and the manufacturer can vomit /dev/tty pretty easily by now.

Please note that there will be some updates in the coming hours! More keys will be added and few things fixed. Honestly I didn’t know Drop was about to release the Kraken so soon.

Susuwatari is in production right now and as far as I know it is very close to be completed. As I said few weeks ago they rushed the production so I’m still not sure what will be actually released. We sent the manufacturer a very detailed report but I don’t think we’ll be able to fix any error unless it is very very bad.

That’s all for now! Stay safe!

This is a kind of good-news-bad-news situation.

The good news is that Susuwatari is going production. The bad news is that Susuwatari is going production.

I just got a new round of prototypes, but I’m informed that they are not prototypes, they are final and they are going production with what we have.

The keycaps had a series of production hiccups at the beginning, then Corona Virus. It was not an easy journey, but the sane thing to do at this point would be to stop and wait for this global emergency to cool down a little. Drop decided this is not the case, they want to deliver asap. I understand people are pissed of the delays and anyway Drop needs to return the investment (which was huge).

Of course I have no saying in this decision. After all they use my name to sell stuff but I have close to zero decisional power.

So at this stage is the set good enough? Yes!

Is the set ready for production? No.

You know by now I’m a perfectionist and I’m rarely happy with anything I do, I’m pretty sure very few will be upset with the keycaps we have now, but still it’s not what I designed and it’s not what I signed off. Not to mention that I haven’t seen all the kits, just a bunch of keys.

It is what it is. Stay strong, at the end Susuwatari right now should not be your top priority.

There’s no sugar-coating, everyone knows what is happening in China (and in the rest of the world). Factories are requested by law to stay closed and they need special permits to re-open. As far as I know until last week most of China was closed for Corona Virus. I don’t have news regarding the last few days but I’m pretty sure Susuwatari production has stopped for quite some time now.

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I said we needed half a miracle to have Susuwatari ready before year’s end… well, apparently we’ve been naughty and Santa gave us coal… or rather he didn’t (coal. Susuwatari. Got the pun?). Since last time I’ve received two rounds of prototypes, but we are still not there. Let’s see together where we stand after two months from my last update.

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I finally got the first batch of Susuwatari prototypes in my hands. Of all the sets I’ve designed this definitely has proven the most complicated. Injection molding is no joke, a lot of variables are at play and if you aim for perfection the road is long and tortuous.

Let me preface this post by saying that for being the first prototype ever created, they are darn good keycaps. Legend positioning, sharpness, size and consistency are already better than anything out of Signature Plastics or GMK. But…

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An update on Susuwatari was long overdue, I wish I had better news to give you but I wanted to bring you guys up to speed on the development since (Mass)Drop is not going to (in a timely manner).

Please bear in mind that the following is by no means an official update, this is just my conjecture and opinion. With that out of the way, let’s see where we stand with Susuwatari.

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It has been a while since the last update on the Susuwatari keyset. The drop for the double-shot MT3 profile set ended few months ago and development is proceeding at a slow but constant pace. It is incredible the amount of work needed to design a brand new double-shot set.

Few weeks ago I received the first color samples. As expected we are not there yet, but we are very close. I’ve already sent my report to the manufacturer and I’m confident that the next samples will be right on spot.

Few days ago I’ve also got the first double shot samples. I’ll be frank, I was expecting more tests to be made at this stage. I received just a few legends, but anyway they are good enough to be cautiously positive that everything will proceed as expected. From the picture above you can see a rather complicated legend injected with unexpected craftsmanship.

What next? I’m working on updated legends following this first round of prototypes to further optimize the injection process and I hope to get a more complete set in the coming weeks. Chinese New Year holidays put a stop to the production for a few weeks and we should be back in the game in a few days.

Sorry I can’t show you more at this time, but I hope to be able to reveal a final-ish product in a month from now.