Screwing up, and fixing it (bridge fix for a lifted pad, soldering a mechanical keyboard)

I have an old Razer BlackWidow Tournament Stealth Edition keyboard I picked up about 6 years when I was temporarily afflicted with an open office. The Razer brand orange switches were never quite to my taste, so it’s mostly been collecting dust. (I also lost the F8 key cap a while back.)

Perfect sacrificial lamb while I learn how to desolder, solder, etc. (I'm waiting on some Kailh Box Navy switches to arrive and then I plan to modify a Das Keyboard Model S Professional For Mac - which I actually do care about).

I had a set of Kailh Box White switches left over from a GMMK I swapped to Pale Blue; several of them went into a numeric keypad that was my first attempt at replacing soldered switches. With almost enough to swap everything on this board (especially since some of the orange switches have built in LEDs and would be sticking around), figured, more practice is never a bad thing.

I almost got it perfect the first time, but borked pads at the space bar and the F2 switch. I was about to chuck it when I read a post on r/MechanicalKeyboards about using a bridge wire to fix lifted pads. I watched a YouTube video and picked up a couple of spools of 24 gauge wire (note: the little plastic tool packaged with the wire spools is garbage; I use a Klein Tools 11046 Wire Stripper/Cutter). Finally, I was ready to try my luck and push my skill envelope a bit.

Success. (I’m typing this post on the BlackWidow.) 

Every key works, and I actually like typing on it now. I'm not proud of many of the solder joints, and it's all still a bit messier than I would prefer, but it works!

Now if I could only find a replacement F8 keycap ... Wonder if Razer would send/sell me one... Alternately, I might go with something like this: Nuclear Cherry MX Keycap (Because it’s the F8 key ... Fast & Furious 8, the Fate of the Furious, which involved the theft of a Russian nuclear submarine ...) Edit: Yeah, for $4 (plus another $4.15 first class mail shipping`), I got the “nuclear” keycap, and, because shipping didn’t change, dollar cost averaging or something, I picked up a red “Escape” key, too.) Another edit: Apparently, there’s no shortage of folks parting out keyboards like these. For $7 (shipped) I ordered a replacement F8 key cap from an eBay seller, because, why not.

Naked keyboard hooked up to test all of the switches using Inspect.

Six screws to remove to get to the PCB, including four under the rubber pads in the corners. Superglued them back into place.

All the keys tested working. (F11 is never recognized by Samabox’s Inspect.app, but activates the “Move open windows aside to see the desktop” Mission Control behavior. There’s no “Eject” key, and the left Windows key reads as the right Option key. The Fn key works but doesn’t register in Inspect.)

Can’t express how awesome it was to see F2 and especially the space bar working!