Playing With The PiBow Timber
Continuing on from the PiGlow, I got my hands on another piece of Pimoroni goodness; the PiBow Timber.
I picked up a plastic PiBow for my first Pi months and months ago. It has remained my favourite and, in fact, only Pi case since that day. Many Pi cases have come since, but none have matched the elegance and ruggedness of the ingeniously engineered PiBow.
The multi-layered design of the PiBow is, when put together, extremely strong and rigid, although the individual layers on their own can be a little fragile. 9 layers in total make up the case, a transparent top and bottom with etched icons for the SD card, HDMI, power and other ports, plus 7 wood or plastic layers making up the body.
Both the Timber and plastic PiBow cases use 4 nylon bolts. The nuts for these are a little small and fiddley, but you'll find spares in the packet and will get a little laser-cut tool for tightening them.
That is until the PiBow Timber. And the only reason it's as good as a PiBow is because it is a PiBow.
The Timber takes the tried and tested PiBow template and applies it to the classic medium of wood. Spruce in this case. The grain and texture of the thin, laser-cut, spruce layers which make up an assembled PiBow Timber lend it an utterly different look and feel to the plastic PiBow. It feels like a traditional piece of computing hardware, or an old Ferguson TV, and looks fantastic as a result.
While I don't want to sound weird. The PiBow Timber also smells utterly fantastic. It's rather like oak smoked salmon, or some other expensive smoked delecacy, and in a very, very good way too. Suffice to say, I have become quite addicted to huffing the rich, smokey aroma of the PiBow Timber... okay, I just got weird.
Although such escapades seem to nausate @pimoroni I'm also a huge fan of combining the PiBow Timber with the classic PiBow rainbow. The 7 layers of the Pi make for an aesthetically pleasing split between two colours, so I decided to mix the Timber with the Rainbow and ended up with a pair of colourful yet understated cases that, once again, evoke those retro computing feelings that, as someone who didn't even live through that era, I shouldn't even be feeling.
The blend leaves one PiBow with Pink, Orange, Green and Purple layers separated by 3 wooden layers, and another with Blue, Yellow and Red separated by 4 wooden layers. I'm more a fan of the Pink, Orange, Green and Purple combo and will almost certainly be keeping my PiBow assembled this way for a distinctive look.
« Back to index Posted on 2013-08-31 by Philip Howard