Tolkien kits beta-1

Posted on 2021, February 9 in Updates

Tolkien sets development proceeds at a steady pace. All colors have been finalized and they are delicious! Legends should be final; for the Elvish set most of the work was already done (from previous Sindarin keycaps), for Dwarvish things are a little more complicated.

The official material is very sparse so I had to rely on Neo Cirth, which is an effort to expand the little Dwarvish vocabulary we have documented from Tolkien. It won’t be super accurate, but it’s a close approximation.

Regarding the kits I’m trying to keep them to the bare minimum so the price won’t be too bad, at the end they are still niche keycaps. I removed most of the keys that I would include in a “standard” set because after all legends are mostly gibberish :) and be realistic: you can put any key in any position you want.

Please help me find errors or missing keys and let me know if there are more keyboards you’d like to support. Yeah, I know, no ergodox.

Elvish and Dwarvish kits will be identical (in key sizes and number of kits), only exception is that Elvish will have 2 color options while Dwarvish only one.

Tengwar

Cirth

The meaning for each key will be revealed when the legends are final.

Regarding additional Tolkien memorabilia, I hope to be able to bring a wooden keyboards with wrist-rest and a desktop mat very likely with the map of Middle Earth. I might be able to pull some artisan, but no promises :)

In the coming days I should receive the first dye-sublimated prototypes, so stay tuned for more updates. I’ll also try to set up a mailing list so you won’t miss any juicy news.

Comments

Posted by Rick Hoen on 2021, February 9 @ 16:50

This looks amazing and a map of Middle Earth Deskmat and possibly matching wooden keyboard are exciting!

Would it be possible at all to have even smaller spacebars? For instance my Dygma Raise uses 1.25, 1,5 and 2x 1.75u.
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 9 @ 17:24
  
  I’ll offer all the spacebars we have available right now
  1. Posted by Martin on 2021, March 11 @ 20:09
    
    Do you have 1u spacebars in any kits?
Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 9 @ 20:04

could you add a topre hipro like kit, where r3 is all scooped (like the homing addon kit for mt3 extended 2048)?
1. Posted by thomas on 2021, February 10 @ 14:37
  
  no response :(
  1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 10 @ 18:41
    
    it’s a niche of niche of a niche :) I’m not sure
    1. Posted by Thomas on 2021, February 10 @ 21:27
      
      Ah ok thats fair, I’m more than satisfied that this is getting made at all :), what about row 5? I just received my /dev/tty set, and am absolutely loving r5 over r4 bottom row, its just so much more comfortable (especially the spacebar), don’t get me wrong, r4 is still pretty great!
      1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 11 @ 11:07
        
        I’m trying to keep the kits as barebone as possible
      2. Posted by Alin Elena on 2021, February 13 @ 14:31
        
        me too n r5… but i think one may get a similar effect with an r4 rotated.
Posted by RamPandaPuss on 2021, February 9 @ 22:32

Any possibility of getting blanks? Especially non-alpha colored blanks would be appreciated (by me, haha). 😊
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 10 @ 07:55
  
  yes, I’m considering blanks, not sure how to handle that yet.
  1. Posted by Alin Elena on 2021, February 14 @ 16:27
    
    maybe a GB only for blanks… and more pbt less abs…
Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 10 @ 08:48

this looks amazing! cant wait
Posted by Dutchie on 2021, February 14 @ 16:03

Looks amazing! I’ll be buying one of everything, can’t wait! Also a +1 to RamPandaPuss on non-alpha colored blanks.
Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 15 @ 06:48

Hardcore ortholinear set? Use colemak on 36 key keyboards so don’t need much but getting rid of english letters would be clutch!
1. Posted by Andrey on 2021, April 15 @ 03:11
  
  +1
Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 17 @ 23:18

What’s the date? Going to japan for a month don’t want to miss this. Lol
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 18 @ 07:43
  
  I’d say about 2-3 weeks
Posted by Scott Newell on 2021, February 18 @ 11:47

Any possibility of switching the ortho to hardcore? Let’s be honest, if you can’t handle hardcore you shouldn’t be on ortho ;)

Any chance at R5 instead of R4? I know this may be on tooling that doesn’t have R5, just curious.
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 18 @ 15:28
  
  I agree on ortho, let’s see what people say.
  
  Regarding R5/R4 it’s just easier with R4 because the last two rows are on the same profile, but technically we could do R5 no problem.
  1. Posted by Mike on 2021, February 18 @ 20:54
    
    I think hardcore for the Ortho sets would make more sense. Either that or split the alphas and the mods into separate kits, but that seems like more work.
    1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 19 @ 07:58
      
      the rationale is that who can do with hardcore can also do with training but not vice-versa.
      1. Posted by Mike on 2021, February 19 @ 19:49
        
        That’s some good rationale. Either way the sets look amazing, can’t wait for the sale to start.
  2. Posted by Scott Newell on 2021, February 19 @ 01:34
    
    I’m hoping! I don’t know about others, but for ortho at least I have really enjoyed R5 since I have my board pretty flat.
    1. Posted by Jonathan Rascher on 2021, June 16 @ 04:27
      
      +1 to this, ortho (and ergo) boards tend to be flat, and R4 thumb keys are just not comfortable on a flat board. That’s one reason I really like the trend of (PBT) MT3 ortho kits have R5 thumb keys. It’d be super awesome if this set continued that trend.
      1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, June 16 @ 11:00
        
        I’ll see what I can do
  3. Posted by aikilink on 2021, February 24 @ 06:14
    
    I’m all for hardcore mode, mono-legends for ortho! :) Thank you so much!
2. Posted by Paul on 2021, February 19 @ 09:40
  
  This comment speaks to me. Hardcore Ortho. Gimli would be so proud.
Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 20 @ 19:00

I agree with the other comments on the hardcore legends for the ortho kits!

Any chance you could add a couple more 1.5u and 2u keys to the extras kit? The ortho+extras is almost perfect to deck out my Moonlander.

Would be great to see the silmarils on the Elvish keys and the Nauglamir on the Dwarvish. Maybe as artisans?
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, February 20 @ 20:43
  
  do we know how the Silmarils are actually done? It’s a nice idea actually. I’m trying to have the Arkenstone done, of that we have a pretty clear description. But I don’t know if it will be possible.
  
  I’m going to add some blanks, still have to think what exactly. Any request?
  1. Posted by Anonymous on 2021, February 21 @ 00:36
    
    There isn’t a whole lot of description to go off of; they were three gemstones that contained the light of the two trees of Valinor. They were crafted by Feanor, who coincidentally for this set, also invented the Tengwar script. Earendil set one of the Silmarils upon his brow when he sailed off from Middle Earth, so you could assume they were roughly forehead-sized. Morgoth also held all three of them in one closed hand to hide them from Ungoliant, but that’s not very helpful since we don’t know how big Morgoth’s hands were.
Posted by aikilink on 2021, February 23 @ 17:36

I love and appreciate your dedicated Ortho kits – with Susu, it was so awesome to be able to buy in without paying for the full base kit + ortho mods!

That being said, much like some other commenters, I really hope that mono-legend alphas will be put with ortho. As a Dvorak typist, that would save me there, and I also really like the look of just the Elvish legends.

I feel pretty confident that most of the people typing on ortho boards are touch-typists. It would be super awesome if that was possible! Thank you so much!
Posted by Matthew on 2021, March 10 @ 16:18

Great job on kits. I’m liking them. Although I wouldn’t if I still used ergo lol
Posted by Arthur Vinícius Lucas on 2021, March 15 @ 18:25

how do i support this project? Is this keycap still being sold?
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, March 15 @ 20:29
  
  not yet! Soon!
Posted by Marin A Elena on 2021, March 20 @ 11:51

will you have an international set?
1. Posted by matt3o on 2021, March 20 @ 17:41
  
  that would be terribly complicated, but we have ISO support.
Posted by Disker on 2021, June 25 @ 16:11

Amazing work! I love MT3, my favorite of all profiles, so thanks for that as well. Is there any possibility of an ergodox kit? It could be blank to make it easier. Thanks for considering : )

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