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geekhack Community => Keyboard Keycaps => Topic started by: Jamesbeat on Thu, 15 March 2012, 20:56:34

Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: Jamesbeat on Thu, 15 March 2012, 20:56:34
I just finished dyeing the keycaps on my AEKII, and they came out really good.
I dyed them very dark brown, which I knew in advance would make the black legends illegible.
What I didn't realise was how illegible!

I'm totally fine with this, as I'm hoping that blank keycaps will force me to learn to type without 'cheating'.

Thing is, I expected to still be able to read them if I held them up to the light at the right angle, but somehow they have completely blended in.

Again, no problem, I got an even better result than I had hoped for- completely blank keycaps.

The trouble is, I now have this big pile of blank keycaps with various profiles, and no way of reading the legends to find out which row they should be in...

Is there a trick to this?
I sure hope so...
Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: Autolyze on Thu, 15 March 2012, 22:23:28
While it is a bit easier if you have them all sorted, you can always put the obvious keys (tab, capslock, big shift, etc) on a keyboard first and then just put other things on to see what matches their profile.
Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: alaricljs on Thu, 15 March 2012, 22:36:39
Or instead of putting caps on and off, set them up on a flat board as tho they were on the KB and check the profile against known caps such as Backspace, Tab, Enter, and Shift.  Those 4 keys cover every profile on the board.
Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: Jamesbeat on Thu, 15 March 2012, 23:08:22
Man, I hoped there was a way of cheating somehow :(
You're right though, the larger keys will act as a pretty useful guide, along with the bumps on the home row.
Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: dirge on Fri, 16 March 2012, 02:31:06
Would like to see pics of finished board.
Title: Oops! By all means laugh at me, but please also help...
Post by: Jamesbeat on Fri, 16 March 2012, 20:37:36
I'm pretty close to finishing it now.
I've been taking a few photos during the build, and I'll make a thread about it when I'm finished.

I dyed the function keys orange today, they came out pretty good. I tried to dye the arrow keys dark green, but they came out brownish, so I'm going to have to do something about that.