Lubing WhitesFirst off, I just want to say that this thread has been immensely helpful. I had a great time reading through all of it, and learned a ton.
One thing that I noticed is that no one has had much success lubing whites. I spent some time this morning creating about thirty 62g, lubed ergo whites. It took quite a while because I was moving slowly and trying to develop a repeatably process, but I think I found one and wanted to share it here. (Note that none of this is really new, but I had to cobble it together from 4 or 5 pages of this thread. I figured it would be useful to have it all in one place.)
PreparationTo get it out of the way, springs were lubed with Victorinox multi-tool oil. Everything else was done with Krytox GPL 103 or 103/205 mix.
To start, it's important to acknowledge that whites are not all the same, and that means
they can't all be lubed the same way. The bag of 100 whites I had contained 46 with a hard click, 40 with the proper soft click, and 14 that didn't click at all. The first thing to do is to separate them.
As for the difference between the hard-clicking and soft-clicking whites: I have no clue. One popular belief is that whites come pre-lubed, but that's almost certainly not the case with these. I also couldn't detect any physical differences between the soft-clicking, hard-clicking, or not-clicking whites. If anyone can actually figure this out, that would be great. For now, I'm okay with it being black magic.
For making ergo whites, I only considered those with a hard click or soft click; I didn't have much luck bringing the click back on the 14 that didn't click in the first place. I've been told that replacing the housing can sometimes work, but I didn't have any luck.
Lubing soft-clicking whitesFor soft-clicking whites, I lube the stems and nibs with 103 oil using a very small brush:
It is incredibly easy to kill the click on whites by over lubing or lubing the wrong spots. For the already soft-clicking whites, I found that any lube in these areas killed the click entirely:
Putting the stock springs back in to compare, I found that this resulted in no change in the click but a noticeably smoother press.
Lubing hard-clicking whitesThere's an additional goal when lubing hard-clicking whites, which is to turn a hard click into a soft click. This can be done by
carefully inhibiting the click by adding about a 70/30 mix of 103/205 to the very top of the slider tracks:
A very, very small amount of this mix is needed to dampen the click. Using a large amount, or lubing any lower than I've shown above, will kill the click. The reason the 103/205 mix favors the 103 is because the 205 is just there for adhesion. Too much 205 will cause the slider to be sluggish and kill the click. This time though, you can bring it back by cleaning off the lube with isopropyl alcohol and trying again.
The stems should be lubed the same as the soft-clicking ones.
ResultsThe end result, especially with lubed 62g springs, seems to be a very nice and buttery smooth soft-clicking white. So far I've only been able to test them in a 6-switch tester, but I'll hopefully have a board filled with them come this weekend.
I hope this helps someone. Happy lubing.