Welcome to Rampkins
This is a nostalgia archive for the steampunk-themed computer keyboards my brother and I used to make!
We used www.rampkins.co.uk, Ebay, and our store on etsy to sell them Worldwide
Manufactured in our small workshop (AKA shed!) in Shropshire, UK, our "Buccaneer" keyboards comprised of a sturdy hardwood frame, brass plated sides, and a hand engraved "Rampkins" nameplate at the front. The keys, mounted on robust Cherry MX switches, emerged through separate holes in the gold-tooled, genuine leather faceplate. Vintage cabochons covered the status lights, seeming to glow from deep within the device.
We created a 'making of' for our first Buccaneer keyboard, and a Youtube video. I can't remember if we sold the first one on ebay, or our Etsy store
♈︎ A bit more 'Rampkins' blurb! ♈︎
Christened the Buccaneer (Garr!), this was our take on the Steampunk-keyboard design that was popular for a few years starting about 2009. The project was inspired by a keyboard created by Jake Von Slatt. I'm pretty sure the Rampkins name came from Lady Sybil Ramkin, a character from Guards, Guards, by Terry Pratchett, the P got added because www.ramkins.com had squatters!
Our keyboard began as a Das Model S Ultimate, chosen for its distinctive "clacky" sound and suitability for our design. Later models used a CHERRY G80-3000 MX keyboard; it had similar internals, but had a lower quality case, which was fine for us as it meant we could get the internals we needed for half the price! We switched the punched out polycarbonate key covers for Envirotex Lite High Gloss Epoxy that looked much nicer. There were other alterations I can't recall, but I'll update as my memories return - less a flood than a trickle!
The wood we used was mainly salvaged from knackered old furniture; a busted old cabinet from my nan's house was mostly chestnut - it pretty much provided all the wood I needed for multiple keyboards.
I remember buying some American-chestnut dowel to make the keys on one keyboard as they had
gone for a darker look - black leather, purple cabochons, I'd also acquired a chunk of mahogany which was used for the frame.
🐝 Oh no, not the keys! 🐝
I remember estimating at the time that each brass key took between 20 and 30 mins to manufacture; cutting, chamfering, rounding, sanding, polishing, filling with resin and inserting the key-stem, punching the typeface, epoxying the typeface, and finally cleaning up. Each keyboard had 104 keys - that's between 35 and 50 hours to manufacture the keys for just one keyboard! I made jigs and developed a few "speed-me-ups", but it was always slow going. The wooden keys took half the time... I prefered it when they asked for wooden keys! My Bro did the image-work (in photoshop I think) and the printing of the typeface, on our oh so reliable printer that never-ever cocked up for no apparent reason on a regular basis at all! One must suffer for ones art!
☭ Unique Customers! ☭
Over the years we had some unique customers living in some rather unique places! A logging town in British Columbia, an outback town in Australia, a US airforce base! We sold one to a Russian guy living in Moscow, and I had a hell of a time trying to get it to him! He'd ordered it just before the invasion of Crimea, so as soon as that happened Russia was obviously on the international shit-list - by the time we'd finished making it options to deliver it to him were very limited. It got as far as Finland the first time, then got returned. The second time, Sergey (not Vladimir!), convinced me to send it via some random, border-hopping courier set up "ad-hoc" to run goods from Helsinki to Moscow. I can't remember the exact details, but it got through in the end, and he covered all the delivery costs. Sometimes international shipping can be a bitch!
♅ Neocities ♅
I like Neocities, this is the way I prefer to interact with the internet - oldschool, and on my terms! This is how the Web should be (full of personal spaces that people have complete artistic contol over), and it kinda was until the decline of myspace (which I unfortunately missed out on, due to being caught up in America's "War on Terror" - Army green always had a certain allure to me... and the job security I needed at the time!).
Anyway, I digress... It's a shame that the dreams of Tim Berners-Lee have become so distorted, because although the fundamental capabilities of ye-oldy-web are still there (I'm using them right now!) the Pandoras-Box of Corporate-Horrornet has unfortunately been unleashed, and the World Wide Web has Corpo-Cthulhu's tentacles shoved well and truly up its arse! ^(;,;)^
It's a shame that most people rarely see the true wonders of the web these days - 🏄 Surfing the internet in the 90s was a buzz, seriously! I follow no scriptures, but I remember feeling a kind of religious elation as I surfed the various webrings and weird personal websites... it was like walking on the moon, the possibilities...
It blew my mind!!
But thankfully the ethos never died; so here I am, back where it all started, typing cyber-scribble into Notepad, wrapping it with html, then tossing it into the cyber-ocean like a message in a bottle!
Left-click for a random bottle in the Cyber-ocean!!!
Live long and prosper, Nanu Nanu, and smoke me a kipper; I'll be back for breakfast!
My site button, if you'd like to link me
