Painting my Keycaps

[BlueByLiquid]

I decided to paint my keycaps for fun on an old Kinesis keyboard. After doing the keycaps I did a lighting mod on it later which I just posted here: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=45078.msg939339#msg939339

Here at the finished keycaps. The letters do not show through as much as the photos show them you can barely see them. I'm fairly happy with them.





This is more of a "What I did" not a "how to" because I just did what I wanted.

So the first thing I figured out was extremely helpful.
You need these toothpicks. They fit perfectly in the keycaps and hold them tight. Then you just put them in some cardboard and you have an easy way to get full coverage of the keycaps and not have them touch the ground. Plus your out only $2-3.



I used this paint from walmart.



It took two coats to look perfect all over with an hour between coats. You can see the letters underneath in the photos but you can not really seem them in real life unless you have a light hit it perfectly. For some reason the spherical keys looked the worst after only one coat. I don't know exactly why maybe it was because they were blue to start with.

I also painted the case which was originally white. It was much harder to do and get even. I think it was because it was older but it was hard with all the curved surfaces to get the paint even. Plus I scratched the crap out of it and messed it up in several places while doing my other mod so I would need to repaint it to look right.

[nubbinator]

Looks good, but be aware that the paint will wear off pretty quickly.

[BlueByLiquid]

Looks good, but be aware that the paint will wear off pretty quickly.

Thanks!

Do you really think it will were off that quickly and what do you mean by quickly ? I actually messed up the case when I first painted it and it was beyond ridiculous to get off. I tried a paint scraper, a electric sander, and the only thing that finally took it off was soaking it in simple green for 48 hours and then hand sanding it for a long long time. That may be because I did around 4 coats of paint on the case and only two on the keys. Also I have replaced the home row on my current kinesis and been using them for about a month with no noticeable difference. That may be because as I mentioned I put more coats (3) on the home row because they were harder to get full even coverage on. This paint seems to make an almost rubber like consistency even after drying which seems to be tough as crap. Either way it is so easy to paint them using the method above with the tooth picks I think I would just pop them off and paint them again if they wore down but it is something to keep in mind.

[absyrd]

It will not wear off that quickly, especially the textured stuff. I would not worry.

Toothpicks is also my method of choice.