Painting keyboard keycaps
March 14, 2008
While switching to the dvorak/svorak keyboard, one issue I faced was that as long as I could see letters and signs on my keyboard's keycaps, I would keep on looking at them while typing. The only way to force myself into true touchtyping was to erase all letters and signs from all the keycaps.
I tried a few methods.
The first one was to take a standard qwerty keyboard, take out all the keycaps and spray them with model paint. That didn't go well: the paint ran under the keycaps and jammed the part of them that glides inside the keyboard, hence making the keys hard to press. But I guess someone with more experience of spray paints would have done a better job.
My next attempt worked better: I purchased double sided tape, cut small paper bits and sticked them on every keycap with the tape. After a few weeks though, the paper had turned from white to greasy grey and I had to replace them.
Finally I went down to the closest beauty shop and purchased a number of cheap nail polish tubes. After a few attempts I finally got my hands on a few colors that fit for keyboard painting: white, black, electric blue and the like. It was important to find non-transparent paints. It worked very well. Now my typematrix looks like this:
I had to take out each keycap, one by one, cover it with a generous layer of nail polish, something like 4 or 5 strokes per keycap, and let the keycaps dry over night. Be careful with keycaps that are already painted: don't attempt to add paint to them until the first layer has completely dried out or you will get irregular coatings. And operate in a well weathered place, the smell is rather strong. There shouldn't be too many particles in the air too, or they will stick to the paint.
I tried a few methods.
The first one was to take a standard qwerty keyboard, take out all the keycaps and spray them with model paint. That didn't go well: the paint ran under the keycaps and jammed the part of them that glides inside the keyboard, hence making the keys hard to press. But I guess someone with more experience of spray paints would have done a better job.
My next attempt worked better: I purchased double sided tape, cut small paper bits and sticked them on every keycap with the tape. After a few weeks though, the paper had turned from white to greasy grey and I had to replace them.
Finally I went down to the closest beauty shop and purchased a number of cheap nail polish tubes. After a few attempts I finally got my hands on a few colors that fit for keyboard painting: white, black, electric blue and the like. It was important to find non-transparent paints. It worked very well. Now my typematrix looks like this:
I had to take out each keycap, one by one, cover it with a generous layer of nail polish, something like 4 or 5 strokes per keycap, and let the keycaps dry over night. Be careful with keycaps that are already painted: don't attempt to add paint to them until the first layer has completely dried out or you will get irregular coatings. And operate in a well weathered place, the smell is rather strong. There shouldn't be too many particles in the air too, or they will stick to the paint.
