 There is a hobby that is exploding with popularity on the internet right now, and if you learn how to do it, you can actually make a good amount of money. These products are not readily available, so selling them can help you earn a nice chunk of change. For example, at the beginning of June, I bought a keyboard kit from a brand called Keycult for $700. That might sound absurd, but after I'm finished building it, it is appraised to sell for $2,000 on the aftermarket. Today's video is sponsored by Dashlane. Dashlane is a password manager that helps you remember all of your passwords. Why do you need Dashlane? Don't lie to me, you don't remember every single one of your passwords. And if you do, that's because you use the same one for everything. And if you're that kind of person, I hope you enjoy getting all of your accounts hacked one day. Dashlane autofills all of your financial and personal information every time you log into an account linked with their service. 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After building my first mechanical keyboard, I was addicted. If you've never done it before, you have to try it at least once. There's no affiliate code or specific product I want you to buy. I am literally just telling you this because I've tried it and it is amazing. Frustration, anger, sadness, depression. And that is all of the praise that this hobby is going to get for the rest of the video. You see, I am actually incredibly disappointed with the mechanical keyboard community. There are no good beginner tutorials on how to get into this hobby. There are thousands of two to three hour uploads of someone who built one on their Twitch stream. There are really specific tutorials on only one specific model build, but from everything I've seen, there isn't one single good introduction to mechanical keyboards video anywhere on the internet. Every video I've seen always approaches this hobby as if you already know something. Three months ago, I didn't know anything about keyboards. And the only reason I was able to learn anything is because I was lucky enough to run into someone named Taha Types, which if you don't know, he is the number one mechanical keyboard content creator on the internet, aka the guy who built Tifu's keyboard. Dude, this thing is nuts. Oh my God. Who also happens to be a cool guy. Would you consider yourself a cool guy? No. So in this video, I'm going to tell you everything that the mechanical keyboard community forgot to tell you, which basically means everything that people made fun of before and then taught me about afterwards. In order to build a custom mechanical keyboard, you need six parts. A case, a PCB, stabilizers, a plate, the switches, and lastly, the keycaps. And if you want to build the keyboard, well, you need one more thing. Lube. Yes, you heard me correctly. Lube. Get your mind out of the gutter. Why do you lube switches? Why? It's one of those things where once you try it, you can't go back. It just makes your switch feel and sound so much nicer. And it's just not something many people are aware of. But once you try it, it's like, it was life changing for me. There are different types of lube that people use to lube their mechanical keyboard switches, but the most commonly used one is one called CryTalks 205 Grade 0. Find some of that and order it. There are three types of mechanical keyboard switches, linear, tactile, and clicky. All three of those categories typically feel and sound different. Linears have a consistent press all the way down. Tactile switches have kind of a bump and you feel a bit of pressure before the switch actually actuates. And clickies are basically little metal maracas. In the keyboard community, people will typically yell at you that the type of switch you pick comes down to preference. But in my opinion, there are better switches. Explain why clickies are the worst type of switch. For example, right now I really like a linear switch called Novel Key Creams. They feel smooth and have a really nice sound. Cherry MX Blacks are also a linear switch, but they feel cheap and scratchy in comparison. If you want to find a switch that works best for you, I highly recommend finding a switch tester and buying one so that you can see what you think you would like best. PCBs are kind of like the motherboard of your keyboard. Your switches will be going into your PCB. Your switches will have either three or five pins on the bottom, so make sure that your PCB can support that. For a beginner, you just need to know there are two types of PCBs, hot swap and solderable. They can be a bunch of different sizes, but we will cover that later. Hot swap PCBs lets you pop the switch into the board, whereas solderable PCBs need to have the switch actually soldered in. For this, you need a soldering iron, and a good one will typically cost you $100. If you plan on building just one keyboard, then I highly recommend you get a hot swap PCB so you don't have to spend extra money on solder and a soldering iron. Just keep in mind, if you are going to be using hot swap, if you pop the switches in and out too much, you can damage the pads on the PCB. I've done it both ways and I think hot swap for your first build will be fine. Okay, so there are different size keyboards, and there are also different formats. So there's 60%, 65%, 75%, TKL, or 80% and full size boards. I don't know man, that sounds like a lot of work. Those are not all of the sizes, and there are other sizes, but they are not nearly as popular. What the keyboard community doesn't tell you is that as soon as you start looking for anything that isn't 60%, it becomes significantly harder to find and a lot more expensive. For example, if you needed to build a 60% custom mechanical keyboard, you could probably build a cheap one from anywhere from $100 to $150. If you wanted to build, let's say, a 65% board, which is like five more buttons, the cost literally triples. You end up paying $200 extra dollars for five more switches and a little bit of a bigger case. I'm not saying that you should avoid bigger sizes, but I'm just letting you know that as soon as you see something that you want or need, if it's not 60%, prepare to have a hole in your wallet. So a plate is what you put the switches through before they go into the PCB because it helps hold them in place. There are different materials and different formats. However, if you want something with a really nice sound, I highly recommend you get brass. It's always going to be more expensive to get brass, but trust me, I've tried the different materials and nothing sounds as nice as brass. But something else the keyboard community doesn't tell you is that there are different formats for plates. So PCBs can normally support different types of formats and depending on the keycap set you're using, you need to make sure you order the right plate. Keycaps are measured in units. So if you see that your keycap set has a left shift button that is to you, you need to get a to you plate. However, as a general rule, most keycap sets have a left shift button that is 2.25 you use this as a general rule. If you don't want to do your research, I say this because you're talking to a guy who is told to just order a plate online and proceeded to order eight incorrect plates that no longer have any use that may or may not have cost him $300 that he can't get back. Do you remember the time you told me to get a plate that didn't fit my PCB? Damn, I'm going to get called out for this. By the way, on the small chance you run across this, there's this really weird Korean format called WKL. Do yourself a favor, avoid it. Why? It's an homage to vintage keyboards like the Windows key wasn't around many decades ago. So keyboards back then, they physically had that blocker because the Windows key wasn't a thing. Yeah. So the custom enthusiast scene, I guess they have a really big appreciation for vintage and older things and that layout just kind of became popular. So you're saying I can blame hipsters. Most people refer to these as stabs for short. You need stabs to stabilize the longer key caps on the keyboard, like your left shift key, your spacebar, your right shift key, the backspace key and your enter key. What again, I got to learn firsthand through experience is that there are different kinds of stabilizers and there are higher quality ones. For example, I was using snap in stabs. I was building one for a client. I went to ship it. I packaged the whole thing incredibly well and when it arrived, I came to find out that instead of staying snapped in, it snapped out, which after I complained about this publicly, I was made fun of asking why I didn't buy screw in stabilizers. No one told me anything about screwing stabilizers. Long story short, I had to desolder all of the switches from the PCB, reinstall the stabs, resolder it all together, resulting in eight hours that I could have spent doing something else. Anyways, do yourself a favor. If you're building one, buy screw ins, not snap ins. So like I mentioned earlier with different size PCBs, there are also different size cases. There are different materials and finishes that cases can be made of. Some of those accommodate those of you who love RGB and some of them have sleek minimal designs. Whatever you choose, just make sure to get the same size as your PCB. And lastly, the key caps. You can get a cheap $20 set on Amazon or you can spend $200 on a nice GMK set. As for the different types of materials, I'm going to be honest, I don't know that much about them, but there are specific videos for that topic on YouTube. As for the profiles, it's pretty simple. There are a lot of different types of heights and sizes for key caps. All the different types will fit on top of your switches, but the different profiles are going to come down to preference. There's SA, XDA, DSA, a bunch of different types. And if you want to see them all, you can just put in a Google search for key cap profiles. I personally love SA. It's a tall, thick, chunky key cap, and I like the hollow sound that it has when it hits against brass. So where do you buy this stuff? Do you remember Neopets? Do you remember how whenever you needed to find an item, there was a little wizard search feature that could help you find the simple things. But anytime you needed something a little bit nicer or specific, you'd have to search each individual store going from user to user to user, hoping to find the thing you needed. And when you finally found a seller, it was sold out. Yeah, that's basically mechanical keyboards. What I mean by that is mechanical keyboards are not usually manufactured in large quantities. Anytime you see a really unique or cool design that you think would look really nice for you, oftentimes it is a small project that is crowdfunded and started by an individual within the community. However, there is one place that you can definitely go to if you were looking to find stuff that is almost always available. KBDFans is probably the most beginner friendly website where you can find full DIY kits or individual parts. We'll talk a little bit more about them and other stores later. Here's the thing, keyboard stuff is not like computer stuff. You can't go on websites just hoping that it's available and have an Amazon Prime to your place in two days. Remember how I said that most projects are started by an individual and funded by the community? Well, if there is an item that went up for sale that you liked but you missed the very short buy period, the only way you are going to get it is on the aftermarket. There's a subreddit called r slash mechanical keyboards, which is pretty much the only place you are going to find stuff secondhand. Now, I don't know much about setting up bots, but if you're serious about getting something that you want, then you're going to have to learn on how to set up pings to come to your phone. The second something with your keyword gets posted because I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to find something and it sold out within the 10 minutes that it was posted. Now, let's say you're a completionist, a real nerd and you want to understand everything there is to know about keyboards. Where do you go? Obviously not this video. This is for beginners. Well, there is a website that you will get recommended by a lot of veterans in the mechanical keyboard scene and that is geek hack.org. The mechanical keyboard subreddit is still the biggest has the biggest following of any keyboard related platform, but it's like flooded with memes and other stuff that isn't necessarily informational. Geek hack definitely has tons of information. It has history. It has years of history too. It's a great like place to learn about keyboards as well as stay up to date on upcoming products that are coming out, products that are currently live that you can purchase. Is that why it looks like it's a website from a forum page in 2002? Yeah, it's pretty old. Now, while I understand this website was created while forum styled websites were popular, this thing is so much text that it makes Reddit look like a picture book. The worst part is the website throws terminology at you and there is nothing on the front page that even tells you what those terms mean. Speaking of terminology, here are some words you are going to hear a lot in this hobby and here's what they mean. Group buy. You pay for this item now and you'll see it. God knows when. Group buy is you putting up money to fund a project that is hopefully going to be shipped to you in the next year to six months. No, I'm not kidding. If the item you are trying to fund looks nice, it is usually going to take six months to a year for you to finally get what you want. Lube. No one is making a sex joke. People put lube in their mechanical keyboards, but it is possible someone did make a sex joke too. Anytime you see any words that sound like tribosis 3204 or some weird complicated sounding name and the numbers afterwards, they're typically talking about lube. There are some switches with letters and numbers in it as well, but most of the time I promise you it's lube switch. This should be obvious by now, but it is the little mechanical device that goes under your keycap mods. No, we're not talking about moderators. We're talking about the keycaps. They're often different colors on fancy keycaps or different colors on keycap sets. GMK. GMK is the German manufacturer for the Cherry profile keycap. If you see that before a keycap set, it is Cherry profile and probably pretty expensive. Keycult. Keycult is the Louis Vuitton of keyboards. It is a brand. If you ever see it and you don't have a lot of money to spend, close your eyes, turn around and walk the other way. Interest check. An IC is an individual gauging the interest level of how much the audience of mechanical keyboards would like to see their idea come to life. So where do you buy these things? Well, Nathan, aka Teja types, the guy we've been talking to throughout this video, he is the number one mechanical keyboard content creator in the world right now. He is a large factor as to why this hobby has exploded in the last year. He is sponsored by a lot of these websites. And if you want to help and support him forgiving us this information and being a fine, fine, fine, fine. If you want to help support him, there are links below his Twitch stream that you can click on that actually are affiliate codes that help you get a percentage off. I'm trying to help him out. Okay, not me. This also saves you money. So calm your eyes down. So to wrap it up, are mechanical keyboards worth building as poorly as this hobby is explained online? Yes. While there is not a lot of easy to digest information about this niche, you should take that as opportunity because a lot of people don't know how to build these keyboards or how to buy the right parts. If you take it upon yourself to do that, you're looking at a potential side hustle that can make you a good amount of money. Learn the hobby, build one for yourself. And then if you have some extra cash, build one and sell it to somebody else. I guarantee you any of the stuff that you build if you follow anything that was said here is going to be infinitely nicer than any razor, corsair, whatever type of keyboard you're looking at buying. So to wrap it up, I hope you found this video creative, entertaining or informative in any way, shape or form. And as always, have a great day.