Hey guys! completely new to the forum here. Hope i'm welcome!
Got my first mechanical keyboard a few weeks ago from a guy on reddit. (cherry blues; their okay) No body / case, but got the rest for a steal. I'm planning on making a mahogany + aluminum body as soon as can get some assistance with the saw. (i'm a computer geek, not a woodworker
)
Anyhow, decided the font and color of my keys was pretty ugly so I figured i'll try my hand at painting them all white. So far hoping they wont get rubbed down quickly. (bare with me, I rarely do full right ups like this so i'm not the best at righting these things in the best sense)
I started by pulling out my keys one by one, tried the plastic one the keyboard came with, but got no luck. (it sucked pretty hard) so I ended up making a ghetto keypuller from some metal.
Beautiful, isn't she? Once I got them all out I started sanding each one down, as the paint for the letter stuck out a little and I didn't want for it to stick out after painting.
I then cleaned each one with alcohol to try and get rid if any left over dust. I have pictures but they're kind of pointless. From there I created this pretty cool labeling system, for painting, and other reasons.
I just did it because it looked cool.
If your interested, I used Rustoleums 2X
Ultra Cover flat white paint. From the title it's super paint, but I can't say that it really is. (unless it shoots laserbeams, is just a can of paint to me) not pictured is the same brand stuff but it's clear coat or something, i'm hoping it stops the paint from coming off super easily. *crosses fingers*
Started painting - it was windy as hell out today so I practically wasted an entire can of paint trying to get it all covered. Not as smooth as I would've of liked, but that's what I get for being impatient.
oh well As you can see labels didn't really last, but I have the original picture so knowing what key is which will be a pain, but possible.
and the key I secretly did before all of this, because I didn't want to massively mess up.
after that I clear coated, no use in a picture because it just looks like the same thing, if a bit shinier. Hey! I guess it's time for the interesting part. For the letters I will be leaving blank with no lettering because i'm cool like that, but for everything else i'll be
stamping on the letters in a stealth keycap fashion with a gold paint. the test key I used was an extra windows key I had for the keyboard, so I used that for the stamping. The stamps I used are a mystery font, but I
think it's serif. These are from Michaels purchased a long time ago, but I believe you can either order some on amazon for ~$10 or find them at your local grossly overpriced art store.
I was recommended to use paint, so I avoided stamp pads and just used what I could find in our massive pile of it cheap nice art store paint. I tried padding the stuff onto the stamp but that didn't work so well, so ended up dipping. Yes, it didn't turn out the best, but it certainly looks okay and i'll most likely get better at it the more keys I go through.
So that's what I have for now, I will be however updating this post as I finish the keycaps. Since I still have no idea what the hell i'm doing, if you have any recommendations or concerns please voice them down below or something. Thanks
