OK , this one is . . .
*** see footnote for backgroundbs(tm)
Nah! the punchline is too good . . . SUFFER! :ebc:
*** . . . already partially completed by its previous owner, I bought it from a writer, he'd billed it as a (caution hyperbole ahead =8-} . . .to follow?) shiny , like new, well loved, one owner . . . yadda yadda . . . 1400cs/133 he'd like to place in a good home. When I went downtown to pick it up, I took a quick look, figured it had been well used, but well cared for and all that greasy oil buildup from his hands would clean up nicely. He'd have his greenbacks and my promise upgrade/not eviscerate his baby and I'd have a cherry chassis for a166MHz goodie-swap with Beater . . . besides I REALLY wanted that CD/Door and all the lovely 64MB of Maxed Out Memory Module Goodness lurking under the surface!
Whatever . . . I went to clean it up tonight . . .
:o . . . .NO WONDER he loved this thing, he must have been right handed because he typed the living sh. . . . erm . . . shine of a lifetime onto all those clean as a whistle keycaps! The left hand shift key, right side of the spacebar, return and delete keys and every cap in between are as shiny and lovely to the touch as the surface of a Kosta Boda decanter!
Which brings me to the point of this topic: 
Has anybody ever actually polished the keyboard and entire case plastic surfces of a PB to a gemlike high gloss sheen?
jt :coolmac:
use simple green or some sort of other cleaning solution, mix em with oxy clean and let em sit in a bucket for a day or so.
Do you mean that's how to get off oily buildup? My problem is that there is no oily buildup! The majority of the texture of the top surfaces of the keycaps appears to have been polished away by finger buffing under EXTREMELY heavy use. I can literally eyeball the curve and feel the hollow where plastic has been worn away on the surface of the space bar! The spacebars on my TrueForm desktop keyboard are polished to a smooth, glossy surface under heavy use, but it's NOTHING compared to this and I've never seen a laptop keyboard come close this one!
I was thinking that I might complete the process on all five surfaces or the tops of the keycaps at the very least and, if that turned out well, possibly doing the same thing to the entire case.
jt
Perpetrator of the 68kMLA's text format impaired:
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I'm willing to bet jeweller's rouge and a dremel or other buffing wheel on very slow speed would buff all the keys to match their well-worn friends.
Watch your fingers. I've ended up with disturbingly shiny fingernails after detail work on a buffing wheel. It ain't very manly lookin'
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The keys on my wife's keyboard are actually folding across the top, like sand dunes, because of the constant wear she puts on them. She wore the letters off long ago, but now they look melted... She does type pretty fast, y'know...
I forget where I saw it but one of the methods used to clear up rough cut edges on plexi is a quick pass with a blowtorch. I don't know if I'd use a blow torch on keys but maybe a heat gun would work to get the effect.
I'm going to be butching up a keyboard or two for a hack so I may mess with it a little this weekend. The texture on those worn keys is pretty cool so I'll post if I find a method that works well.
If all else fails you can always give them a paint job. The Phoenix's keyboard and the PowerMatrix's keyboards both have the same feal as one of the keyboards I've got that has the same worn down look and feal thats being described (which is really nice on a keyboard IMO)
this happended to my 1999 G3 PowerBook. some of the keys, namely the space bar, and the letter keys on the right hand side have bee nwarn shiny by heavy typing. The letters however are completly intact.