The Splitrose - my handwired split keyboard

Customary finished build first.

Is this the split we really want?

And it pops together!

And now on to the build log. Completed case pic 1 - For some reason I didn't take case build pics. The wood pieces are 1/8" Honduran Rosewood. The rest is the finest acrylic from u/jolimon.

Completed case pic 2 - Since I used metal threaded inserts in the back of the case it makes dead spots where the LED doesn't glow through. Lesson learned.

Completed case pic 3 with initial layout of LED. Once I realized how hard those would be to solder I decided to rearrange this.

Before the guts went in. In hindsight this should have made me worried because, I mean look at that. There is no room for all those wires!

Here you can see the layers better. Top here is a flat black acrylic switch plate, then the sides are 2 layers of 1/8" rosewood, and then a 1/4" frosted clear acrylic. The inner 'teeth' are 2 layers of 1/4" frosted clear acrylic under teh 1/8" switch plate. They are all just super glued together. The glue worked better than I thought, no real problems.

Some dry fitting with the piles of parts.

Dry fit split!

Bottoms cut. Here it is before I had the guts in and had to add more screws to keep it shut. On the left is also a cutoff of the rosewood I used to do the bottom and wood case parts.

Was tough to cut with a scrollsaw but I think it turned out well.

Gateron Browns and PBT OEM caps from ymdkeyboard on eBay. The caps are high quality, the printing not the best, but the price was right and I'm happy with them! Very easy seller to work with.

Switches in and the top edge framing added on. Another 1/8" bit of Rosewood, just super glued on there.

Fancy switch shot. And you can almost see how soft the rosewood is here.

And now to the wiring. It worked the first time, but then I had nothing but problems. At the time of writing it seems to be stable, but I think just all that wiring jammed in there ends up shorting out here and there. So I ended up essentially rewiring it again, shortening everything as much as I could and then a layer of electrical tape wherever I could. Here is the LEDs just glued onto the back.

These are delicate to work with, the heat of the soldering iron wants to melt through the pads on these strips, so use caution.

IT WORKS IT HURTS THE EYES

Here is the first version of my left hand wiring.

Right side V1. What a mess, no wonder I had issues.

I mean it worked, but not for long. As you can see I used HDMI breakouts to connect the two sides. This was because it had plenty of pins to work with and I could just map those across the sides directly.

Here is V3 of the right side. You can see a little bit less mass in the wires, but still a lot. I also added a 4th screw to hold it closed. These were tough to get in the right spot and get to stay there. The metal ones didn't work as well as the nylon ones. Lesson learned there.

The current version that works. Pretty clean wiring wise on the left side.

Eh, still pretty messy, but it closes well and is currently working.

Here it is all working!

Teeth view.

I do like those Gat Browns, though I want to try Mod-M or Mod-H.

Bottom closed up and slide together. Its not exact, but pretty good I think.

Dat split.

My work setup. Just need new cables.

Even cats like the split layout.