The case

I put on the rubber feet, and cut some EVGA foam to fit in the bottom of it, making sure I didn’t obstruct the screwholes for mounting the PCB. 

The switches

One of the problems with watching keyboard Youtubers, is that when you hear a sound test of someone typing away merrily, they’re not using the switches as they were when they arrived.

Or if they were, they immediately follow that up with a different sound test where they have the switches lubed and filmed. And that second sound test sounds much nicer. 

If you are a person who types words for a living, you will be listening to the noises your keyboard makes all day long. And if you’re at all sensitive to sound, having a nicer sound (not scratchy, less clicky-plasticy, deeper) matters. 

You achieve this nicer sound by disassembling all of the switches and lubricating each part of them individually. Then you pop in some lovely pre-cut foam cushioning, and close it up again. Now you can press on the stem to mimic a keypress and hear the results of your work.

I did that a lot to give myself the will to keep going because I am not very smart and made some of this process much harder than it should have been. 

Here’s where you can start learning from my mistakes. 

Switches have 4 parts:

• The lower housing that slots into the PCB. This has pins on the base, and a little metal leaf on the inside that connects to them. 
• The stem. This is the bit you press on when you type. It has a cross on the top, a stem in the middle, and little legs on one side of the base. You want those legs to make contact with the metal leaf in the base.
• The spring.  The spring sits on a tiny little pole in the base, and you drop the stem  into it, making sure you orient everything properly. 
• The upper housing. This has a hole for the stem and little legs that clip into the lower housing. This is what seals the switch and keeps everything together.   

Did I mention that all these parts are tiny? Because they are. 

I took apart 69 switches. Nice, etc. I kept one for a reference because when I opened the first switch I realized I had no idea how any of the innards related to one another and that is probably (Narrator voice: definitely) an important thing you would not want to mess up. 

While taking them apart, I sorted them into different containers. For logic, and an easier workflow. 

The springs went into a bag. I added 15 drops of the Krytox oil to the bag, sealed it, and shook the living crap out of it for around a minute. Then I kinda smooshed them around in the bag for another minute or so, before dumping them onto a paper towel and disentangling them.

This too was easy. 

Next, lubing, filming, and reassembling each switch.

For this part I needed my little paintbrush, the switch stem grabber-holder thingy, Krytox 205 grade 0 (the lubricant, which is v. thick and goopy and must be used sparingly), and switch films. I did not buy a fancy lube stand, so I used the switch opener as a stand and did all of the things one switch at a time. 

To make things easy on myself, I pointed the switch holder towards me, sat the side of the lower housing with the leaf on it closest to me, and then made sure the legs on the stem were pointing at that same side. I did this for all the switches and it helped. 

The easier than expected and slightly relaxing part was lubing the lower housing and stem of each switch. I was glad I had the grabby-claw thing to hold the stems because they are really fiddly and it made it super-easy to paint them with Krytox and just drop them into the springs. 

The not-so-easy and made worse by me being dim part was the switch film.

For some reason, I kept trying to put the film onto the lower housing. Like this:

Apparently I have very staticky thumbs. The film would literally leap up off the switch and stick to me. I tried using tweezers instead but that was equally frustrating. The foam is designed to sit around a very low ridge on the inside of the switch, and landing it in the right spot was hard. Getting it to stay there was often a battle too.

I must have done about 30 switches, with much gnashing of teeth and cursing of my own hubris, before I thought to try putting the film on the upper housing instead. 

Once I figured that out, this whole process was even more relaxing.

I broke the switch lubing, filming, and reassembly into two sessions over a couple of days. I also broke up each session with mini-breaks to stretch, make coffee (essential), and play with the kittehs.

This not only meant I did not have a sore back from bending over switches for hours at a time, but it had the added benefit of making the kittehs less inclined to dive-bomb the coffee table I had everything laid out on.

Amos (to his credit) only did that once. Smudge contented himself with tapping finished switches because (a) he is a polite boi and (b) they did not look tasty. Smudgey is a chonky chap, he is entirely motivated by food and cuddles. 

That Smudge pic is your reward for reading this far.

Links to Youtube videos that helped me with this part of the process:

• Taeha types
• KeyBonbon

Next up: Modding and mounting the stabilizers