Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects

askew-kbd

Ben Cooper's first split design: the corneoid askew-kbd with some splay.

KBD.news
Published February 24, 2023

Based on foostan's Corne/crkbd, Ben Cooper aka bncpr shared the files of his askew-kbd.

Four "thumb" keys, splay, reversible PCB, hot-swappable low-profile switches with Choc spacing.

This is my first split design. Inspired by crkbd. Angled columns, with the two pinky columns having the strongest angle – bncpr.

What makes this layout interesting is the unusual vertical offset of the innermost column:

It's staggered slightly higher than the index finger. I find that one of the least comfortable keys to press is the B key on qwerty (index goes inner and down) so I tried to minimize that travel. It's not a huge improvement over no stagger, but I guess it's better than having it lower – Ben.

Resources

• https://github.com/bncpr/askew-kbd

Published on Fri 24th Feb 2023. Featured in KBD #114 (source).

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