Das Keyboard Model M
A few years back, I bought a version of the IBM Model M manufactured by the company that bought the rights from Lexmark. Unfortunately, the keyboard itself was black while it had these aweful shiny silver keycaps. The plastic itself is imbued with some sort of sparkle that simply doesn’t lend itself to a professional grade keyboard designed to last for decades. Here’s a sample picture from their website to illustrate.
I had purchased mine before the addition of the Windows and menu keys, so I’m blessed with a full sized spacebar. Regardless, you can easily see that the black and grey thing just isn’t kosher with me. So, in the spirit of the modder inside of me, I decided to change that!
Using a simple can of Dupli-Color Vinyl and Carpet spraypaint in flat black, I transformed my two-tone keyboard into a beautiful black monolith. Vinyl dye paint is designed to soften the plastic on whatever it’s sprayed so the paint can seep into the surface, thus dying the plastic whatever color you choose. Just as other sites state, it’s extremely difficult to mess up a vinyl dye job. Since I don’t have the capacity to photograph large objects just yet, here’s a small sample of just how professional vinyl dye looks.
As you can see, the paint is very uniform and has the exact same texture as the plastic it was sprayed on. I had gotten the results I was looking for! I finally have myself the equivelant of a Das Keyboard only with the loud feedback of genuine buckle spring actuators. Because the keycaps are dyed, I’ll never have to reapply paint unless I wear the keys down past the point of dye. Once I get a larger setup for pictures, more photos will be uploaded.
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 am
I’m very much interested in how your vinyl dye job is holding up. I bought several colors of this and am wondering if this is the right stuff to do my Model M up right.
I, too, bought my Model M new from Unicomp…however, it is the Model M 84-key space saver (see here for details). Pictures are available here.
I’m really going back and forth as to whether I want to paint or not. Hearing some good reports with the dye will certainly help me make a decision.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Unfortunately, the vinyl dye didn’t hold up as well as I thought it would. It seemed to flake off quite a bit with prolonged use and I could easily scratch it off with a fingernail. Oh well. I was only out 69 dollars and it gave me a chance to use vinyl dye for the first time.
I’m going to be calling UniComp soon to see if I can get a black keyboard with black keycaps. I was reading on a few other sites that they were able to do that, though that was well over a year ago now.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I called Unicomp, who manufactures replacement parts and repairs IBM Model M boards, last month to see if I could purchase a set of replacement black with white lettering keys as found on the black M-13 trackpoint keyboard (these would also fit regular Model Ms). I was informed that they do not make the black keys/ key caps anymore since they were about $10 more per set to make.
There are still several companies that will produce custom replacement caps that will fit the Model M (mostly used for POS shortcut keys), but I figure it would be very expensive to have one run a single set of the standard 101 keys since they seem to be geared to producing many units of a single customized key. Anyway, might be worth looking into.