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The DTA / CF Wingnut Recovery & Modification Project

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LightningXI:
Hello Keyboard Community!

This is LightningXI. Many may know me by my real name or otherwise just Lightning. I have been involved in mechanical keyboards for about 7.5 years now and have remained much active interacting with community members and collecting both old and new keyboards and artisan keycaps over the years. On this post I wanted to share a special project that I have had the honor to make possible along with community members, including some of old Deskthority and geekhack membership, Pablo of OneCommerce, members of the Keyboard Institute (KBI) (a new space dedicated to home the vintage keyboard community), and Binge of Hunger Work Studio, who generously provided his commitment, time, and service in the modification and documentation of what I will be sharing below.

For those unaware, Deskthority switched ownership in 2021 (and again, most recently). Then, the prior owner of Deskthority, webwit, sold the Deskthority domain to OneCommerce, an e-commerce-focused platform. Since then, there have been several reports that Deskthority, as a website, has been suffering from a variety of domain-related changes and issues with website maintenance. Furthermore, all assets of Deskthority, including physical ones, had shifted to its new owner. Seeing that it would be possible that new ownership could lose these assets after the website’s full transfer (which could also reoccur), a few fellow community folks encouraged me last year to reach out to the de facto owners regarding unreconciled Deskthority Awards Wingnut Trophkeys, one of the few but historically-valuable physical proofs of Deskthority’s legacy to publicly recognize community contribution.

The Deskthority Awards (DTA) was an awards-based event held yearly (as possible) on Deskthority.net “for outstanding achievements in the field of keyboards and input devices”. More information about the awards can be read in the Deskthority Wiki (at the time of posting, this link may be defunct  :eek: - web archive here).

For the purpose of the DTA, webwit commissioned in 2012 one of the very few, but well-renowned, artisan keycap makers of the time, clickclack of Clack Factory (CF), to sculpt and cast an exclusive, trophy-like design that could commemorate this event and its awardees, in a fashion akin to The Academy Awards. Similarly, the Awards were listed under several categories, and a Deskthority member (or public community member/entity) could receive the special Deskthority Award Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkey. A silver key was awarded to each category winner (with the exception of the “Ping Award”, which is dedicated to the “worst keyboard or keyboard/input device-related experience [of the year]”), and a golden key was awarded to the recipient of The Deskthority Award or the Deskthority Lifetime Award.


DTA Wingnut Concept Art by Clack Factory (CF) (source)


One of the early batches of DTA CF Wingnuts to be awarded (source)

Early last year, my inquiry got a response, citing that they had held on to the remainder of these keys. They generously offered to send these to me, also asking me to mark them so that they could not be confused with previous years’ recipients’ keys that had been provided as trophies. After a few months of correspondence and a potential, untrackable mail scare, I was able to retrieve the remaining Wingnut Trophkeys. Below are photos of these that I took when I received them:









With the desire to pass these keys back to the community, I inquired members of KBI and the vintage keyboard community as to the distribution of the keys. From six keys, two to three keys are to be reserved for community members deserving of their ownership for different contributions, explained below:

First, a silver Trophkey to be given to TheBiffle, who had previously contributed to helping OneCommerce in their transition of Deskthority and had been explicitly promised a key by them, only for there to not be a follow-up in this process. One key is to be sent to TheBiffle to honor this unfulfilled agreement.

Second, a silver Trophkey to be awarded to Photekq, for his major contributions towards the documentation of Cherry Corp. keyboards over the years, along with the creation of KBDArchive.org, a website that hosts an unofficial, yet incredibly thorough database of Cherry Corp. keyboards, as well as an archive of the OTD.kr website (OnTheDesk (OTD) / “오티디” / literal for 책상위), a South Korea-based keyboard community group well-known for their efforts in advancing the development of custom mechanical keyboard kits in earlier years (2008-2014, primarily). A big honorary mention in this award goes collectively to louison and all of the contributors to KBDArchive, who painstakingly put together this database.

One silver Trophkey and one golden Trophkey were agreed to be held by myself, as a means to share and showcase these keys at community-organized events and meetups. A key may be put into a drawing in the future.

The final two silver Trophkeys are allocated to future awardees on behalf of the Keyboard Institute (KBI), as one of the main groups corresponding to the vintage keyboard and input device segment of our ever-growing keyboard community, continuing the legacy of many old Deskthority memberships.

To honor the request that these keys remain distinctly separated from previously DTA-given Wingnuts, I reached out to Binge of Hunger Work Studio, an active artisan keycap maker (2013-present) and a very capable craftsman to my knowledge, to modify these current keys with markings that would make them distinct and impossible to invalidate against others from prior years. He agreed to help, and we chatted on various occasions about our research into physical and/or chemical solutions that could enable altering these keys permanently, whilst not damaging them in any meaningful way.

I have much to thank for Binge’s painstaking contribution and collaboration over the past year. Below you can find a summary / log of his work, which he has written in his own words.

—-
Writing from Binge of Hunger Work Studio (HWS)

Pt. 1 - Preface

The idea of a community treasure often takes the form of a celebrity, discovery, or object of affection. One object in the minds of many keyboard enthusiasts represents, potentially, all of these traits. The Wingnut.

While extolling the genius of a functional honor is the simplest way to direct attention to this project I am writing this as more of a confession.

I intend to vandalize six Wingnuts like a cascade of rhinestones across the steering wheel badge of a luxury sports car. I plan to do it in such a permanent way that nobody will be able to forget it or the scars removing that bling may leave. For keycaps that badge is the butt.

Pt. 2 - The Plan

I, HWS Binge, intend to customize 6 Wingnuts for their respective owners to make them uniquely identifiable and tamper resistant. This way generations to come will know that Lightning struck 6 times.

Lightning rescued these lovely cap-awards from certain permanent obscurity and sent them to me after I provided a number of examples of destructive (irreversible) marking techniques as examples of the damage I could commit.

More




The technique I settled upon was to etch/scribe symbols into the plastic in order to first create a surface preferable to mechanical adhesions. Chemically I sought an agent to build the infill to this scribing which has the ability to bond with a wide array of thermoset plastics as artisan keycaps are generally some form of epoxy or polyurethane.

The agent I chose was tested on a number of keycaps both epoxy and polyurethane-based which were lying around my shop. I continued to test until I felt I understood just how attainable the results were going to be in a single attempt. With this process and materials there’s no going back. The means of removing this material will damage the keycaps beyond repair.

Pt. 3 - Results

While executing the project took longer than expected, the results fell into place as soon as I had the nerve to put practice into execution. The scribe I chose to use was a diamond abrasive cone 3mm in base diameter coming to a .3mm tip. To properly fill a marking and make the surface I desired, the markings would have to have a minimum channel width of .5mm.

The only trouble I ran into was that I practiced the technique on so much of my own work because it’s what I had available. If I were to do this again I would have requested a bunch of material samples from a range of thermoset manufacturers and tested on those chips. The Wingnut plastic had either been more brittle (for rigidity) than materials I would traditionally use or it had become more brittle with age. The scribe which admittedly had some amount of play produced relatively clean lines on my caps, but with the Wingnuts it would dislodge comparatively massive amounts of material on this scale. Resulting in my markings thickness varying by a factor of 2. Because I felt like the material was showing signs of brittleness I continued but with the most gentle application of the tool I could accomplish. It wasn’t until applying the infill and checking the UV reactivity of the result that the truth became perfectly clear. The Wingnuts are both brittle and porous. I suspect this has something to do with the deliberate material selection which enabled the coloring technique of these keys. The resulting UV reactivity can be seen seeping into the surrounding plastic. It had always done this in the original tests, but the results on the Wingnuts were much more pronounced.

The original intention of using the agent was how easy the material wets surfaces and the overall flexibility of manufactured recipes available.  The chosen agent is used to permanently bond/seal medical apparatus and furthermore validate the affected area/penetration through fluorescence. It promised that the bond would hold pressure and or tear strength which likely exceeded the affected materials. While I didn’t expect to see any indication of porosity in the Wingnuts, the choice of material for the infill was an absolute slam dunk. It did exactly as promised and shows our destructive marking was not only successful but irreversible.

Below are the final results of the work.

























—- END of Binge’s written segment —-

As can be seen, the Wingnuts have been modified with a physical engraving and filled with a specially-selected chemical agent that marks them permanently. Removal of the markings would necessitate substantial alteration.

Accordingly, the keys have been marked as follows:
    (1) BFL for TheBiffle
    (1) PHO for Photekq
    (2) ⚡ (a lightning bolt symbol) for LightningXI
    (2) Loss (minimalist version) for future awardees. Per suggestion of consulted community members, the symbol serves to "memorialise a beloved forum we've all lost"

After many months of corresponding with Binge/HWS, along with time commitment-based obstacles over the past year, we finally completed the modification work and the results are outstanding. Seeing the final result, I cannot think that there could have been a more well-suited keycap craftsman in the community to carefully modify these keys with the necessary gentleness and precision. Huge thank you to Binge of Hunger Work Studio for his meticulous work and for his willingness to mark these valuable relics of Deskthority and Clack Factory history.

I also want to thank Pablo of OneCommerce for being kind in his replies during our correspondence, and for following up on the retrieval and delivery of these keys.

The already-awarded keys for TheBiffle and Photekq are in my possession and will be sent to them shortly. Similarly, two unallocated keys will be safeguarded on behalf of Keyboard Institute (KBI) for future awardees of their choosing. Finally, I hope to share with community members the keys that I have kept to be shown at organized events (meetups) and other encounters.

In any case, I wanted to be sure to share this endeavor with the community. As much as I am elated to see and hold in person these keys, as a collector and enthusiast of the miniature keycap art made within the community, I am also excited to bring some of these back to put them in hands where they hopefully belong.

My thanks go to the community members who led me through this process, those whom I corresponded with, and Binge of Hunger Work Studio. Thank you.

LightningXI

--

Edit: a few typos and clarification on intent

pears:
This is cool. MST is cool.

ThePanduuh:
Wow! I would not have expected these caps to even exist at this point. Fantastic documentation for the guy that picks one of these up in 10 years and wonders “WTF is engraved on this??” It’s great that you’re gonna bring them to meetups. I hope to see one someday. #spreadthenut

lbassett21:
Wow. I don't even know where to start.

First, a huge thank you to you Lightning for your efforts in making this a reality and bringing these caps back to the community. I could think of nobody better for the job of handling this than you and the execution of how it was done is fantastic. Next, a huge thank you to Binge for their hard work on making these caps unique in a way that respects the work of CC without ruining the caps.

I could think of nobody more deserving than Photekq to be awarded a wingnut for all their efforts and impact in the community. Photekq has been a good friend for years now and has been a very close mentor of mine. Hundreds of hours have probably been spent in dm's asking questions and learning from him and I guarantee that I would not be anywhere near where I am today without him. Their dedication to documenting Cherry keyboards and pushing the vintage keyboard hobby further will forever be something that I look up to. Thank you Photekq for all that you have done for this community, big or small, and huge congratulations on winning this wingnut.

Can't wait to see where we go from here and who wins the remaining two wingnuts! Thank you again, Lightning for everything! <3

HubertThemad:
Very cool!

Even as someone who only has a toe in the artisan community, and someone who has never browsed Deskthority, past or present, I still appreciate you and everyone that made delivering the trophies a reality.

I think it's pretty neat how there used to be a Deskthority Awards event, and the artisans also look super cool.

This is definitely worth the read, even if you're someone who knows nothing about artisans!

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