In my previous post I talked about my growing addiction that I have developed towards custom mechanical keyboards. While I have yet to go full out and build my own (I did order a Kara kit, which at least requires me to put the case together) I have started spending too much time watching YouTube videos of people building theirs.
So, with the knowledge I've gathered from those videos, I decided to take the next logical step and decided to lube my switches (get your mind out of the gutter).
The process is pretty straight forward - take the switch apart, lube the different pieces, and then put the switch back together. I had originally believed that this would be an annoying, time consuming process that had little payoff, since I could never really hear much of a difference in the sound tests people did on YouTube.
I was wrong.
When I ordered the Kara, I decided that as part of that build I wanted to lube each of the switches I ordered with the board (NK Creams) since I heard they were a little scratchy and the general consensus was to take the time to lube them.
So, I sat down the other night and started. I originally only did a single row of switches since I didn't have too much time and I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and that I would actually be willing to do each switch. I noticed as I started (with a Twitch stream on in the background) that I actually found it relaxing to take each switch apart, separate the parts, and lube them.
The entire process for the first row I did took about 30 minutes, which I figured was about right at 2 minutes per switch to lube them and reassemble. At this point, I was hooked and knew I was going to do each switch in the board.
Overall, I'm glad I did. I find the switches nicer to type on now, they sound better to me, and the fact I found it so relaxing means that for every single board I buy in the future (I'm done with pre-built boards, let's be real) I will be taking the time to lube each switch.
Now I just have to wait for the Kara boards to be produced and shipped and I can start the process again.