There seems to be a lot of scattered information about how to Rit dye keycaps. Members have either left the forum or rarely post. So I'm going to consolidate everything I know here, and hopefully pass along enough information to provide useful to others.
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FIRST AND FOREMOST. If you do this tutorial, you assume all risks of ruining your precious keycaps. ABS has a very high chance of warping and melting while being dyed, PBT less so. But even PBT can get warped. Additionally, there's no information on how long this dye actually lasts, so if you find yourself a month down the road wearing patches in the keycaps, gg no re. Lastly, these are merely the instructions I used to dye my own keycaps, and should not be taken as instructions for a successful dyejob. If you experiment with other colors, other mixtures, or just something completely not outlined here PLLLLEEEASSE pay it forward, and post up your findings. Even your failure is valuable information.
1. Bring distilled/filtered water to a boil and add a third of a packet of powder rit dye for every .75 liters. Obviously the more dye you add, the quicker it'll take. There's claims that the longer the keys sit in the dye, the more it seeps in. I'm not sure how accurate that is, or if adding more dye will make the dye take faster, but not seep quite as much. I've also heard some people letting them sit overnight in hot (but not too hot to melt plastic) dye. Who knows the longevity of that, and obviously experiment with cheap keys first (Model M PBT)
2. Bring the water/dye mixture down to a simmer (wisping evaporated water should be floating above the surface, should be right below boiling). I also had good results with adding some salt. Rit dye comes with salt anyways, but I added a teaspoon extra.
3. Drop all keycaps you intend on dyeing, into the mixture simultaneously. If you want a "set" they all have to be done at the same time, or else you risk them being slightly different colors.
4. Using a spoon or chopsticks, slowly stir the keys every so often, making sure they don't sit in any one area for too long. You don't have to stir them ALL the time.
5. Occasionally check different keys for color. Once you've reached the desired color, take them out and toss them in cold water. This will slightly darken the color, so make sure you compensate for that (or pull the keycaps out, dunk em in cold water and re-submerge them in the dye if you want more control over it)
6. Once the color is what you want, be sure to rinse the keys from all the dye and dry them, making sure no puddles of leftover dye sit or dry on the keys.
NOTES:
-I used powder dye. I've heard that liquid dye works better, and I've heard powder is the only way to go. I did powder because of a better color selection, and it was cheaper.
-CLEAN your keycaps before throwing them in. Oily or greasy keycaps will have undesirable splotches on the keys. If your forget, take them out immediately, clean them, and put them back in. This can be as easy as wiping the surface down with wet paper towel, or an isopropyl bath.
-Some keycaps and colors take the color differently. Out of PBT Poker keycaps, Model M keycaps (both one piece and two piece), and HHKB keycaps, the HHKB took the color the quickest. Model M keycaps took the color, but took about 15 minutes per batch.
-Thoroughly rinse the pot you used with bleach and extremely hot boiling water between each batch. This might mean washing the pot 3-5 times between mixtures.
-Be wary of what materials you're dyeing. Model M sparebars are PBT, but HHKB/Realforce spacebars are ABS, which means they'll have a higher chance of melting while trying to dye it.
Results
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Colors I used:
Red = 'Scarlet'
Yellow = 'Golden Yellow' (This can get more burnt yellow if left in longer)
Camo Green = Kelly Green
Wine colored = Mixture of 'Scarlet' and 'Purple'
Vibrant Purple = 'Purple'