Keyboards Keyboards Keyboards. Supposedly its a part of the transfemme stereotype to like mechanical keyboards. Maybe that’s because we are vastly over-represented in fields where having a nice keyboard matters. Maybe not.

Regardless of that, my second mechanical keyboard ever, the Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate, has been falling out of usage lately because its keycaps were a bit out of sorts (read: falling apart).

I got a set of DSA profile PBT keycaps to build a left-handed keyboard (having become a mother, working from home, and working pretty much all the time, left me holding my kiddo a lot and struggling to type). The project never came to fruition due to a child suddenly taking all of my free time (it was very welcomed, though, and the performance hit was really minimal).

So I pulled the Das Keyboard apart, gave it a thurough isopropyl alcohol scrubbing everywhere (cheap toothbrushes are always nice to have around), gave it a nice pink paint job, and purchased a set of plate-mounted stabilizers to affix the new keycaps.

I didn’t think to stop and take pictures while I had the bezel and keybed removed, but I need to redo the paint job on the bezel, as it didn’t cure all the way before I put the keyboard back together, causing small bubbles and ripples, so stay tuned for a proper teardown of the whole keyboard, including a look at the board itself (its got a fancy Via semiconductors chip that offers a 3-port USB 3.0 hub on a chip).