which way do you install Costar stabilizers?

[N8N]

I ASSume that the longer part goes away from the hinge... is this correct?  I bought a Filco w/ no keys and am trying to put it together.  Now that I have the stabilizers I'm ready to get this done.

I also assume that white lithium is the right stuff on the steel-to-plastic interface?

thanks

[reaper]

Check out ripster's key removal guide.  There are a few pics in there showing the stabilizers.  He made a very good guide and it helped me the first few times I had to do it myself (thanks ripster).

[N8N]

thanks.  I guessed that the longer portion would go away from the hinged part of the wire, and the pic of the spacebar removed - if it is shown upside down but not flipped end to end - confirms that.

In any case, I got all the stabilized keys back on using that assumption and the keyboard seems to be functioning correctly so it's all good

just waiting a couple hours for the last batch of modded keys that I epoxied to dry enough to carve with the dremel, then I'll glue up the last ones and if I don't have to touch those up I'll post success.  Hopefully.  I did the space bar the other day and it's working fine, which makes me happy because that was the scariest one.  (had to glue all three posts on because it came off a Cherry MY board and went onto a Filco.)

The caps lock I'm not 100% happy with, but then again, I never use it, so whatever.  It feels like the socket is a little loose on the keyswitch stem, and because it's stepped, when I hit it where my finger wants to hit it, I can feel it moving on the switch.  I'm on the list for a moogle kit so this is really temporary anyway just so I can use the board and it doesn't look goofy.  Unless I surprise myself and don't mess this up, in which case it might just stay like this forever

[N8N]

Oh, I got you.  But the stepped caps lock encourages you to hit it off center.  If I were looking at the keyboard - which I probably would be if I were going for caps lock, because that's not a key that I use a lot. so I'd likely glance down to orient myself - if it were similar to a short right shift or an enter key I'd probaby hit it dead center.  I guess that is likely the largest key on an typical 104-key ANSI board that doesn't get a stabilizer?

I've heard it mentioned re: the doubleshots before but not the regular PBT keys (which I used for my stem donors) that sometimes they fit loose on the stems and you need to shim them.  Since I did the caps lock a couple days ago and the epoxy should be good and hard by now (I did that one and the space bar first) I just shimmed it with a couple layers of the real thin clear plastic that the post office uses to bag packages when it's raining (because I just got a couple books from Amazon while I was working on this) and that has improved the feel significantly.  Still not perfect but better.