Please don't cry blasphemy and crucify me just yet.
I bought my first mechanical keyboard just after Christmas, from ebay: a 1988 IBM Model M 1391401, which I got for $6.50 plus shipping, totaling around $20 (it's a heavy sucker). After cleaning up a couple pencil marks and dirty keycaps, I think I can definitively say that this is the nicest keyboard I've ever owned, and I don't think I'll ever buy another rubber dome/membrane keyboard ever again, unless it brings about world peace, or at least brings about a pot roast, touches me on the knee, and tells me I've lost weight.
I love everything about this keyboard. The no-nonsense layout, no annoying media keys, the tactile feel, the possible use as a weapon in case of zombie apocalypse... It's just perfect in so many ways. But there is just one thing about it that drives me absolutely freaking mad:
CLACK CLACK CLICKITYTAPPITYCLICKCLICK TAP CLACK TICK CLACK TAPTAPTAP
If I'm listening to music and I get caught up in responding to a particularly dim comment where someone is claiming that, I dunno, a GTX295 can be run on a 300W power supply, I'll usually start typing so fast that the noise completely drowns out the music (though in rare cases it has instead accentuated the drum beat, making "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who about ten times better). It's just unbearable.
I spoke to my mother, and she commented that she once worked at a small company where the office computers were outfitted with Model Ms. There were about fifty people working there, and after several weeks of constant clacking, and fifty bottles of Aspirin, the ten people who refused to type on anything other than the Model M had a showdown with the twenty people who refused to come to work without ear plugs. The manager decided to set the three IT specialists to work silencing the keyboards as a compromise. The IT guys silenced about five keyboards, then refused to do any more unless they received a healthy bonus to compensate for them being driven slowly mad by modifying fifty keyboards, with a hundred switches each, one switch at a time. Their demand was met, the "CLACK CLACK" turned to "dat dat", and the world was a better place.
Unfortunately my mother didn't know exactly how they made the Model M quiet. Just that it took a full day per keyboard per person and that the three IT specialists were very short-fused during the process.
I've consulted with Manyak at OCN. The clicky noise of the buckling springs comes from the spring hitting the plastic switch wall when it buckles. So if some sort of cushioning material--say, felt--were placed where the spring hits the wall, then the noise should be significantly less. So adding bits of felt to the switches should help silence, or at least partially quiet, my Model M and spare me risking spending a hundred dollars on a keyboard with switches that I may or may not be able to stand.
But there are a few details that need to be worked out, and I figure this is the place to ask about them.
1.) Which side of the switch--front or back--does the spring hit against? Or should I just wrap felt around the whole inside?
2.) Can the felt just be inserted, or must it be glued into place?
3.) What thickness felt should be used? It needs to be thick enough to noticeably dampen the noise, but thin enough that it doesn't interfere much (if at all) with the tactile feel.
And I may think of more questions later. In the meantime, I'm going to be searching local schools and second-hand stores for another Model M so that I don't risk screwing up my only one. And maybe I'll find another mechanical keyboard, maybe a Cherry or AT101W.
So. Answers, advice, tips?
