My First Keyboard Custom Build

Look at that orange vibe!! My hobby for mechanical keyboards is not new. I love them since I used one for the first time, as part of my trip to China in 2012.

I have had some units, the first one was a Filco Majestouch Ninja with CherryMX® Red, than a WASDKeyboard Tenkeyless with a CherryMX® Brown, and then another Filco Majestouch with CherryMX® Blue, which I sold because it was too loud. After a while, I also sold the other Filco and the WASD one to a friend of mine, and then I entered in the rabbit whole of building my own ones.

I build a Drop ALT from the barebones, not so hard because all the compatibility were already made, I even documented the process here. Then I bought a Glorious GMMK Pro, which I also documented something around it here, and this time, I went completely custom and build my own, by buying the parts separately. Of course I took some cool pictures with the Macro lens.

There are plenty of help around the community, and some Discord servers like the KBDFans, Amazon Friends of Keyboard (AFK) and Space Cables are really helpful. The case is from Etsy, from a very good and reliable Vietnamese 🇻🇳 seller called BreakWooden, and it is the real great-looking component of this build. I always wanted to have a fully wood mechanical keyboard, and with the exception of the keycaps, this is exactly what I had in mind.

This is the part spec, I won’t be adding hyperlinks because it’s likely to break in the future anyway:

• 60% Wood + orange resin case by an Etsy seller called BreakWooden
• DZ60 RGB PCB
• 60% Brass plate from KBDFans
• Durok screw-in stabilizers
• Khail Speed Copper switches
• KBDFans bottom foam and foam dumpener
• SA Chocolate keycaps (bought used on eBay)
• Space Cables coiled cable

I am still getting used to the 60% layout, especially because of the lack of the arrow keys, that’s hard for me because I code a lot and need to frequently move the cursor around my code. I programmed the Fn key to do so, but it will take some time to get used to it. I took the keyboard for a walk, and here are the pictures.

At first, I got a DZ60RGBv2 thinking that the v1 would be better than the original one, but turns out that “v” in this case is for “variant”, and not “version”, so the v2 isn’t actually better than the v1, just different. It has the arrow keys, but it a weird layout on the RShift, so I decided to stick with the regular 60% layout.

The cable is from Space cables, and these photos were taken with the FUJIFILM 80mm Macro OIS f/2.8.