First of all thanks to Arhipio and evangs for your excellent work bringing us this kit, I'm greatly looking forward to using it! Second of all my story so far:
- First time soldering, first ground-up kb build, yay!
- Figured out the flow (pun intended?) of soldering pretty quickly, yay!
- Built with 2.75/1.25/2.25 space layout, Keyboard flashed and tested perfectly
- Using for a bit I realized that I'd guessed wrong and ergonomics for my hands would be better with the middle key as the space bar at 2.25/1.25/2.75 positions instead, boo!
- Tried desoldering just the stabilized keys to see whether the wide plate holes allowed the stabilizers to lever out of place and reinstall, but no dice (boo!)
- Desoldered and removed bottom row of switches and started into the alphanumerics testing whether plate and pcb allowed enough flex for juuuust that little bit of extra needed, but decided not to risk anything (booyay?)
- Noticed that one of the bottom row switches I had removed had some copper appearance on switch leg, it seems I'd lifted a pad! (boo!)
- Desoldered all switches across board and began systematically (and more carefully) removing them, working from bottom row upward (Smooth working thanks Engineer SS-02 solder sucker, yay!)
- Was able to leave top two rows' switches installed and separate plate from pcb enough to shift the stabilized keys positions (yay!)
- Reinstalled switches, re-soldered, smooth sailing (yay!)
- Plugged keyboard back into computer to test, all keys to right of middle spacebar key are dead (boo!)
- Checked soldering, reflowed affected keys, no improvement... it appears the pad I ruined was load bearing! (boo!)
- Time to desolder entire keyboard and disassemble again (boo!), but at least it went smoothly and no more desoldering mistakes (yay!)
- Testing the pcb by shorting across pads, testing for shorts/continuity with multimeter, and by applying my remedial "how do keyboard?" knowledge, it seems I'd lost connection across the ground plane(?) of the bottom row (booyay?)
- First try running a wire from an unused pad to the left of center across to a pad right of center has so far not been a complete success... Right hand space bar is still dead, modifier keys on right side function but I appear to be getting ghost presses on multi-press rollover situations (boo!)
TL;DR
BE CAREFUL EVERYONE when desoldering, double and triple check for lingering connections, and if possible have the proper switch removal tools on hand (I'm still awaiting shipment of an IC puller style remover, but I was impatient, boo!)
I'll try to take pictures or mark up where I think I've ruined my board, maybe with proper knowledge and a better jumpering than I've done so far will have 100% results instead of my partial... I'll try to stay hopeful.
