Waxboil and wet lube is good and you should do it to everything
Posted: 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:
The representative for mitsumi type 2 is the PC 1600 keyboard:
For SKCM/L we have this FK2001 clone:
For Space Invaders we have an ADDS PC+:
For SKCC we have my Creammaster:
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.
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:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
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.