Waxboil and wet lube is good and you should do it to everything

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zrrion

25 Sep 2022, 11:27

So I've restored a few boards recently with a process that I feel gets great results by relatively unsophisticated methods and I feel like a documentation of the process and general rundown of the results of this process across several switch families would be good for anyone who happens to find a cool board in dogshit condition and thinks it can't be restored because I'm here to tell you that it absolutely can.

First step is going to be to waxboil your switches. If you don't know how to do that check out this video. She uses a strainer to hold the switches in the boiling water but I never bothered with that and just dumped stuff directly into the pot. I also just do my wax directly in the pot as well. Less dishes to wash that way.

Second step is to lube the switch with wet lube in much the same way you would for a lubed up modern custom, just kinda paint on the lube in thin coats in places where you expect the slider and the housing to have a lot of contact.

Third step is to do nothing. Put the thing back together and type on the board. Unless you way overlubed or overwaxed the switches they should break in after a week of reasonable use or so.

I've done this for a few boards now and the results are consistently good. I've also tested this out with multiple popular switch families to cover what I feel are all the switches people will reasonable want or need to restore. MX, Mitsumi type 2, SKCM/L, Space Invaders, and SKCC gets wax only just for fun.

The representative for wax+wet lube on MX style switches is this piece of shit:
Spoiler:
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I picked this up in person at the Philadelphia meetup and wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do with it but I won a giveaway for some gat yellows, krytox, and some stabs and I found a tealight candle on the sidewalk so I figured that was everything I needed to restore the board. It came to me from taobao with shitty MX blues and I kept the top housing and springs from those. The springs are in a bag somewhere and the top housings are on the Gat yellows now since I think that looks cooler. Top housings were boiled a few times to clean them (MX switches are safe to boil, both the housing and the slider are good for those temperatures, no idea how many of the fancy plastic blends that modern clones use are safe to boil but you shouldn't need to since those are coming to you new)
I was not kidding about using a candle I found in the trash. I can only assume that the reason Chyros fucked up his attempt so bad is that he did not have as easy access to imperial street candles as I do and had to settle for inferior metric street candles :Y
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Spoiler:
This is way too much wax, I just poured in all the melted wax from the candle instead of just a few drops. Don't do this.
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I waxed the sliders with the tealight candle I found in the detritus on the sidewalk and lubed the sliders with the krytox. The costar stabs were likewise lubed with krytox (I couldn't use the nice PCB mount stabs I won unfortunately) and the rattle is completely eliminated on them. Part of the trick there is to bend a layer or 2 of masking tape over the edge of the plate cutout and then snap the stab clip in. This prevents the clip from moving in the cutout, then just lube the shit out of it.

Results: Probably used slightly too much wax and will need to type on it for a bit to break the switches in but since this layout is terrible and I haven't finished converting it to USB that's not going to happen any time soon. The sound is nice and the feel is still good but you can feel and hear a few of the switches that have a bit too much wax. Best guess is that an overwaxed stem has enough wax on it that the surface of the slider has whatever texture the wax has when it cures. This is just wax though so it should wear down to a smooth surface pretty quickly but at least for now you can hear and feel the effect of the wax in a negative way on this board. Binding is not effected.
The representative for mitsumi type 2 is the PC 1600 keyboard:
Spoiler:
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This board has a full thread here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26905 but as a summary, switches were boiled a few times to clean them, waxed, and then lubed with Permatex dielectric bulb grease #85184. 85184 just refers to the package it's in and not to the specific formula so other containers of bulb grease from permatex should be the same thing but it's a 14 gram tube and I'm in no danger of running out any time soon so it's prob fine to get just a small tube.

Results: Like the previous board, this board was probably overwaxed however this one has a great layout and I used it enough that it did break in and it feels very nice. There is still an amount of roughness to the switches but I am given to understand that this is just how milky housing mitsumi type 2 is. they sound great, feel close to as good as I suspect you could get these particular switches. I'm sure the mitsumi experts in the audience could improve upon my efforts but I think only marginally.
For SKCM/L we have this FK2001 clone:
Spoiler:
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This one I posted a bit about in this thread and the restoration for these switches is much the same as for the mitsumi. The salmons were in meh condition. Not bad but they weren't especially dirty so they only needed the water changed for boiling once. Standard procedure, wax the sliders and lube with dielectric bulb grease. The copper click leaves aren't as wear-resistant as proper alps leaves and a lot of them had to be bent back into shape. They're very satisfying but not especially consistent and I imagine that when new they would have been excellent.

Results: On these I got the wax spot on and no break in was required. And they're buttery smooth as a result. I got similar results on my double leaf omnikey but the tactility on that one kinda overshadows everything else about it so it's not a realistic thing to use as a benchmark.
For Space Invaders we have an ADDS PC+:
Spoiler:
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The process is the same here as well. Boil the housings and change the water every so often until the water stops looking dirty. Boil the sliders the same, on the last boil of the sliders instead of dumping the water out pour a few drops of wax in and stir. I didn't bother to remove the contacts from the bottom housings when boiling and that has not effected operation at all.

Here's a before picture of the switches:
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and after everything was boiled:
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This gets them to just feeling meh, the wax gets them a lot better, and the wet lube really elevates them. For the wet lube I again used dielectric bulb grease and only lubed the outside of the tri-finned peg that the slider sits over. I tried applying the lube the the cavity on the slider and putting it on the housing but that was difficult to do consistently so I switched to lubing the peg on the bottom housing. I didn't lube the contacts or any other part of the switch, just the outside of the tri-finned peg.

Results: They sound great, wet lube makes switches a little quieter and generally deeper and on SI that is a really good combination. I slightly overwaxed them and this results in some roughness before they're broke in but after I've typed on them for a while it's once again a very smooth switch.
For SKCC we have my Creammaster:
Spoiler:
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This isn't the final pic of it, I was just messing around with caps, but it has visible switches so that's the pic I'm using. Ultimately the Creammaster just looks like a Pingmaster outwardly, the only difference is that it has SKCC cream so not having a pic of it with the normal caps is fine, yall know what a pingmaster looks like. This one is more of an honorable mention since I didn't wet lube the switches but I feel like it's reasonable to include it in this roundup because it's the only pre-din switch I've tried wax on and IDK where else I would really include it since I don't feel it's worth it's own post.
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Results: SKCC's slider geometry has a lof of concave right angles for wax to build up in and they seem to be the most sensitive to overwaxing. I waxed some tall SKCC for someone on reddit once and I got way too much on the first go but even after removing a lot of the wax the customer reported that the switches felt like shit for the first week but by the end of that week they were feeling way better. On this board I seemed to only barely over wax them and it did not take quite so long to break in. SKCC good.
So the end result of all these restorations is very promising across the board. All of the switches I tried this on were greatly improved and they improved in ways that would have taken a lot more effort to accomplish with other restoration methods without the need for specialty tools or lubricants.
The biggest factor in the success of waxboil appears to be in regards to how much wax you use and that seems to vary across switch families. You can overwax a switch and make it gummy, you can overwax slightly such that break in resolves any smoothness issues, you can wax it perfectly and be good to go as soon as the switches are assembled, and you can underwax. Over and under waxing are difficult for most switch types and overwaxing with break in seemed to be the most common and was achieved without any attempts to measure the amount of wax or water involved. I did attempt to mix in some amount of PTFE powder into the wax for the SKCC switches but I couldn't determine a difference between SKCC lubed in that way and other SKCC I lubed with plain candle wax.

SKCC is very susceptible to overwaxing whereas the gat yellows received way too much wax but still weren't gummy. There's probably a ratio of wax/water/sliders for each switch type that would get you consistently good results and I'm slowly getting a feel for it but that's not super useful in instructing other people how to replicate these results. More research is needed by someone more meticulous in their record keeping than I am but so far the indication is that tolerances for wax amount is pretty forgiving, at least for the switches people are most likely to try and restore anyway.

And I do have some insights regarding the wet lube as well. With the MX switches I used Krytox 205g0 for almost all the switches and for a few test switches as well as every other switch that received wet lube I used dielectric bulb grease. The performance of the two wet lubes was largely similar from everything I could observe. I believe the krytox was thinner by a small amount but not by enough that it mattered significantly as when assembled the gat yellows lubed with dielectric grease are indistinguishable from the krytox ones to me. Unless there is something about krytox that makes it especially suited to keyboards that I'm not aware of or makes it's application easier in a way wasn't taking advantage of I really don't see any reason to use it over the much cheaper dielectric grease. I could see a thick lube like dielectric grease being ill suited for very low weight switches but for everything I tried a thin application of dielectric grease did not impede the return travel of the switches. I'm not saying you should re-lube your fine;y tuned custom with dielectric grease from your local auto parts store because I don't think the results will be significantly different from what you already have, but I am saying that this is an easy way to achieve high quality results and that's what this method is all about.

Conclusion: Waxboil + wet lube is designed to have an exceptionally low barrier to entry while having exceptionally good results and appears to deliver on that goal across all attempted switch types. While switches that are not able to be boiled would require different cleaning methods the lubing methods used here are still applicable to those situations and the results I've achieved so far could be achieved on switches where boiling isn't an option. Seriously, look at the before pictures for the SI switches again, those were terrible and I've typed this entire post on them with no scratchiness, no binding, no issues whatsoever. I could drop this board in front of someone who didn't know that these switches used to be dirty enough that they were dampened and they would have no idea. Whatever the state of the board you have, so long as the pieces are all still there and everything is electrically sound you can and should bring it back to life.

Meowmaritus

25 Sep 2022, 17:06

zrrion wrote:
25 Sep 2022, 11:27
She uses a strainer to hold the switches in the boiling water but I never bothered with that and just dumped stuff directly into the pot. I also just do my wax directly in the pot as well. Less dishes to wash that way.
I'd say use a strainer just in case since the bottom of the pot might get very hot depending on the pot material and burner type.

Anyways, really neat post. I still need to try waxboil. I have a lot of alps sliders I never use because of the scratch, might try it once I'm feeling better.

User avatar
Muirium
µ

25 Sep 2022, 20:26

Yes, I’d suspend them in the water, as my electric cooker is well too binary to ensure any reasonable temperature control. (Gas and induction are both much better, full stop) Don’t want melting / warping.

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darkcruix

25 Sep 2022, 20:42

I have tested the same with Orange, Salmon, Green Linear Alps. The effect is great and I made the same discovery that it takes about a week to be really good and stays that way. I didn't dare to do the same on my Brown Alps, as I have a set that is already exceptionally good.
I boil them in a strainer and then put them into a cup before adding the wax. I don't want the wax in the pot to be honest ;) What I found is that it takes exceptionally long to get the sliders dry. There is always a tiny drop in the middle - even 24 hours later ;)
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User avatar
zrrion

09 Feb 2023, 19:13

darkcruix wrote:
25 Sep 2022, 20:42
I don't want the wax in the pot to be honest ;)
I bought a pot at the thrift store for a few bucks just for this. I was using an old pot a roommate left after moving out but the teflon started flaking and I ended up with pieces of that on switches which wasn't ideal. I need to get a strainer just for this so that I don't have to mess w/ wax in the strainer mesh
What I found is that it takes exceptionally long to get the sliders dry. There is always a tiny drop in the middle - even 24 hours later ;)
We have an air fryer (really a tiny convection oven but we only really use it as a standard electric oven) that also has a dehydrator mode and I've found that works very well for drying switch parts. For housings and caps I run them through a salad spinner first but smaller parts just go in the oven as is. Highly recommend doing this but if you live with other people you should tell them what you're doing otherwise your spouse will be concerned about switch parts in the oven :lol:

Anyway, I just applied wax-wet to some MX blacks that were dusty enough to have a tiny dust bunny in every switch and the results are great. I haven't broken them in since they're loose switches but comparing them to a loose heavy grey I have they're at least not obviously worse. One feels lubed and one doesn't obviously and the grey is heavier but even when spring swapping a normal spring into the grey I still don't think one is obviously smoother.

So if you have a batch of vint blacks that aren't buttery smooth and cleaning doesn't quite get them there I think wax-wet is an excellent idea for them. I suspected as much from how the gat yellows took to it but it's nice to apply this to a switch that needed restoration as opposed to a new switch.

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