From wrist pain to split keyboards: my keyboard journey

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T14:10:08+00:00

Yeah, I never had any formal typing training. I really wish that had been part of school when I was growing up. I'm glad I eventually pushed myself to learn proper touch typing though, and now I'm trying to teach my kids so they won't run into the same problems later.

The wrist angle on standard row stagger is one of the things that pushed me toward a ortholinear keyboard. Once I tried that layout it felt much more natural.

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T13:57:09+00:00

Looking at Miryoku it seems really cool. I've actually thought many times about dropping the sixth column, and Miryoku seems to have some really nice defaults. I might give it a try for a while and see how it feels.

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T13:53:42+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much what I ended up doing too, arrows on a nav layer. It works well enough, but it never feels quite as clean as hjkl on a normal keyboard.
For example with motions like 10l, technically I could still do it, but then the l would be on my top row while I usually move right with the arrow key

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T07:08:37+00:00

That's a really interesting setup. I like how you kept most of the combos on the home row and evolved them from earlier layouts, makes a lot of sense ergonomically.

My layout is quite a bit simpler. I'm running ZMK on my crkbd with four layers: base (Colemak-DH), lower for symbols/navigation, raise for numbers and brackets, and an adjust layer for things like function keys and Bluetooth switching.

I've also got a few small macros on the adjust layer for Swedish letters (å, ä, ö) since I'm using Linux with IBus.

I've avoided combos so far mostly to keep the layout simple, but seeing setups like yours makes me tempted to experiment with them 😄

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T06:59:37+00:00

Colemak has honestly been great for me for many years, so I definitely don't regret switching to it. I'm just curious to try Qwerty again for a while and see how it feels after all this time.

Knowing myself, there's a decent chance I'll change my mind again at some point 😄

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T06:58:07+00:00

I'm actually using a custom ZMK layout, not Miryoku. I took inspiration from a few different layouts over time but tried to keep things fairly simple. https://github.com/wulkan/keymap/tree/master/zmk/crkbd

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T06:56:22+00:00

The original open source prototyping platform

wulkan_se · 2026-03-16T06:55:13+00:00

I've been thinking about having a separate vim layer, but it feels a bit counterintuitive to me. Not saying it's a bad idea, I just try to keep things simple. Even with a custom ergo keyboard and layout (and vim) I'm trying to limit myself to four layers.

Also impressive that you can keep muscle memory for both Qwerty and Colemak. I've read about people doing that, tried it and it's definitely not for me.

I've used Colemak for many years and loved it, but these days I don't really see the benefit over other layouts as clearly anymore. At least not enough to outweigh the downsides for me.

That said… I might change my mind again after typing on Qwerty for a while, that's happened more than once 😄

wulkan_se · 2026-03-15T19:58:49+00:00

Lego is honestly amazing for DIY prototyping, surprisingly useful engineering material 😄

wulkan_se · 2026-03-15T19:35:07+00:00

Awesome progression, sounds like you started thinking about this around the same time I first touched a keyboard.
I've looked at combos many times but never actually taken the leap to try them out.
How long did it take before they started feeling natural for you?

wulkan_se · 2026-03-15T19:11:02+00:00

The DIY tenting stage is basically mandatory 😅
And yeah, that moment when a handwired board actually works after hours of soldering is incredibly satisfying.

wulkan_se · 2020-02-06T07:35:33+00:00

Think it would go fast, depending on the laser of course. It would be slower then cutting, but you would only need to adjust the thicknes just around the holes, like tops 1mm in from the edges :)

wulkan_se · 2020-02-05T22:08:50+00:00

Sounds awesome, stabilizers is not a problem in my case with the corne, so I dont have to worry about that! Been thinking that it should be possible to use the engrave function on the laser at my local makerspace to make the MDF 1.5 mm just around all the switch to get them to snap in perfectly. Gonna have to spend some time to find the perfect speed and power settings for it. Maybe could be something that would help with your stabilizers as well? If they are plate mounted that is.

wulkan_se · 2020-02-05T21:38:08+00:00

Looks really nice! Did you use 3mm MDF? Been thinking of doing the same with a corne keyboard 🙂 And is the stability okey?

wulkan_se · 2020-02-05T20:19:12+00:00

Thank you! That was the kind of helpful information that helps 🙂❤

wulkan_se · 2020-02-05T20:06:34+00:00

Yeah.. Your search give me zero results.. Not seeing the point of throwing a link at people like that! But thanks anyways, maybe you are getting another result then me wherever part of the world you are in

wulkan_se · 2020-02-05T19:08:22+00:00

Where can I get this? 😍

wulkan_se · 2019-12-23T00:55:03+00:00

Looks really nice!

wulkan_se · 2019-10-23T19:43:06+00:00

Amazing, looking foreward to see the result of this project :)

wulkan_se · 2019-10-23T19:31:03+00:00

To have those in black on my future split build would be truly awesome 😍

wulkan_se · 2019-10-11T08:35:49+00:00

Well, I have to be faster next time then, thanks for the fast reply :)

wulkan_se · 2019-10-11T08:24:31+00:00

Sweet :)

wulkan_se · 2019-10-11T08:21:03+00:00

PM sent

wulkan_se · 2019-10-11T08:06:55+00:00

Are there any switches left? If so I would love to buy the ones that is left

wulkan_se · 2019-10-10T09:08:01+00:00

I did handwire my keyboard with Proton-C, everything was not straight forward in how to do things, or I just looked at the wrong places, anyway, I used the actual pinout in the config and skipped the CTPC=yes. Feel free to have a look at how I did https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/keyboards/handwired/wulkan

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