A few weeks ago I had the luck to find an announcement for a 1990 IBM-made Model M in italian layout in seemingly excellent conditions, basically everything I was looking for. And so I bought it.
It arrived the other day:
Detachable coiled cable, two parts keycaps, grey secondary lettering on the numpad, and the left Alt key has green lettering, while the right Alt Gr is black.
Although not excessively dirty, it was clear it needed a good cleaning. I started with the caps, and noticed that the undercaps corresponding to the F, J, and 5 (numpad) were white instead of grey, a detail I enjoyed a lot.
The spacebar is wire-stabilized, while all the others use shaft stabilizers.
I didn't want to spend for a 5.5mm nut driver, but the bic and lighter did the trick anyway. Once inside I found dust wool on the base, and that two plastic rivers broke off. I decided I won't do a bolts and nuts mod yet: if it's not broken (too much), don't fix it, am I right?
Many hours and q-tips later the barrel plate was clean again, at which point I noticed that the insides of the barrels, especially those of the most used keys, were coated with an extremely fine white powder; I blew inside the barrels with a straw, and it helped, but wasn't enough, so I dusted them with more (dry) q-tips and it removed most of the dust, but in the corners the dust was still there.
I then used a cleaned keycap to see if I felt any difference, and the results worried me deeply:
F keys and other less used barrels were noticeably smoother than the main letters regardless of the cleanup I did up to that point.
Now, considering I don't want to separate the barrel plate from the metal plate, I have two options:
- use more q-tips with a cleaning agent
- lubricate the barrels
Both options have risks: both the cleaning agent and the lubricant might be corrosive for the plastic, as I read here on geekhack and other forums, and I don't know what can be safe to use. Are the barrels just worn out or an effective cleaning might solve this problem? What do you guys suggest?