Building my first mechanical keyboard – a series

Or, how to learn from my mistakes so you have a better time building your first mechanical keyboard.

Why not just buy a pre-built keyboard, you idiot?

Short answer: Because I already own one, and because I wanted to customize it. 

More honest answer: I need more desk space.

I should explain. My bestest pal bought me a Razer Huntsman keyboard years ago, and in my last apartment move the movers somehow managed to lose two keycaps from it. 

I shrugged that off and went back to using my trusty Logitech G510. For most of the pandemic I’ve been working on a Macbook Pro, which just about fits on my desk beside my own PC. 

Then, this happened:

With the new equipment, there was less scamper room on the desk. The boys were displeased.

For work-related reasons, I ended up needing a PC. So they shipped one out to me, with two monitors and no keyboard. My apartment is TINY. That desk is all the space I have for work and it for sure doesn’t have room for two keyboards. 

So I put my overtaxed brain to work and bought splitters that would allow me to share use of my mouse and keyboard and my own monitor with the work PC. So far, so good. 

But then, see the blurry cat on the left in the picture? That perpetual motion machine is called Amos, and he loves to flop on my desk, often on my keyboard because it’s big and takes up a lot of room. 

He loves pausing movies with his butt and turning on caret browsing with his tail somehow. 

Ah, says I, I need a smaller keyboard. 

And wouldn’t it be nice if it was mechanical? I really miss having a nice mechanical keyboard to type on. Especially since I am now doing all of my typing at home, and at this time of year there’s a lot of it.  

Cue a feverish montage of me googling then falling down a Youtube rabbit hole of videos of people making and customizing their own mechanical keyboards. 

My 3 a.m. brain told me I could probably do that, and started making a list of things I’d need. 

My 3:30 a.m. brain threw caution to the wind and broke out the credit card. 

Somehow, even after a sleep, it did not occur to me that I may have been unwise. Well, it did, but not in a sensible way. Instead of going “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU FOOL?!” it asked “Why did you order from China? You will not get the things until 2022 which is almost literally months away!”.  

Obviously, the solution was to order some more stuff, but from a European site, so I would get it faster and without needing to ransom it from Customs. 

So that’s what I did. 

Next up: What you need to build a mechanical keyboard.