About

DOWNSTROKE is a two-person shop. We build sixty-five percent keyboards in batches of a few hundred, and we stop when the batch is gone rather than keeping a warehouse full of every colourway forever.

Why four millimetres

A key travels four millimetres. The contact closes halfway down. Everything people mean when they say a board feels good or feels cheap happens inside that distance: how the spring loads, where the bump sits, what the plate does when you reach the bottom. It is the only specification we design against.

How we build

Cases are milled from 6063 aluminium and anodised, not painted. Plates float on silicone gaskets. Switches are lubed by hand, ten at a time, and every board is typed on before it is boxed. Caps are doubleshot PBT, which is the expensive way to make a legend and the only way to make one that lasts.