Mechanical Keyboard Workbook Monthly

How the Mechanical Keyboard Workbook Monthly Actually Works

The workbook is a structured tracking system for people who build or test keyboards regularly. Each month you get a new sheet with a predefined set of switches, plates, and foam configurations to test. You log the sound, feel, and any issues with each combo. It sounds simple enough, but the way people use it usually makes the whole thing worse. I started using it last year because I kept forgetting which switch felt how after three weeks. The problem wasn't remembering — it was that my logging method was garbage. I wrote "thocky" on half my sheets and called it a day. That's not data. That's a diary entry with no reference point.

Getting Your First Mechanical Keyboard Workbook Monthly

You download it from the main subreddit sticky or wherever the author posts the monthly link. There's a version for beginners and a version for people who already have five keyboards sitting around. Grab the beginner one if you have fewer than three builds. The advanced sheet assumes you know what Gateron Milky Yellow v2 bottom-out feels like compared to the standard version, and it isn't kind to people who don't. There is no paid tier. It's free. The author updates it monthly with new switch releases and seasonal foam recommendations. I've been using the PDF format in Notability on iPad, but I've also seen people print them out and fill them by hand. Both work. Just pick one and stick with it.

The Method Most People Get Wrong

Here's the part nobody explains well: the workbook isn't about finding your "favorite." It's abouting a baseline so you can notice differences when you swap components later. Most people treat it like a rating system. They give switches 1 through 10 and move on. That defeats the purpose entirely. The correct approach is relational. You test switch A, then switch B on the same board, with the same plate and the same keycap profile, and you write down how B differs from A. Not how good B is. How it's different. "B is 12g lighter at actuation, slightly scratchier on the downstroke, and the sound is sharper on bottom-out." That's useful. "B is better" is not. I ran into this edge case last November when I was testing the Zealios V2 switches alongside the Akko V3 Cream Yellows on a 65% board with a polycarbonate plate. The workbook had a field for "bottom-out feel" and I kept writing "solid" for both because they both felt solid to me. That was useless. I went back and added a qualifier: "Zealios bottom-out has a slight cushion from the spring bounce; Cream Yellows hit hard with zero give." Suddenly the two switches weren't interchangeable in my notes, and I stopped accidentally buying the wrong one for my next build.

Advanced Nuances You Won't Find in the Sticky

One thing the workbook doesn't explicitly tell you: lube choice changes the data more than the switch itself. If you're lubing your switches for the test, note the lube brand and amount in the same row as the switch model. I once spent three weeks comparing KTT Heavy vs. Krytox 205g0 on Gateron Jupiter switches and concluded Krytox was smoother. Then I realized I'd only lubed one batch and left the other stock. The comparison was invalid. The workbook has a column for it but most people skip it. Another thing: plate material matters more than people think, and the workbook treats it as a secondary variable. It shouldn't be. If you're testing switches on a POM plate one month and a steel plate the next, your notes are comparing two different things. I keep a separate mini-sheet just for plate comparisons so the main workbook stays clean. Takes about five minutes to set up and saves you from misreading your own data six months later.

Where the Workbook Falls Apart

It doesn't handle custom keycap profiles well. The default sheet assumes standard Cherry profile keys. If you're testing with SA or MT3 caps, the sound and feel baseline shifts enough that month-to-month comparisons get muddy. I worked around this by adding a small section at the bottom of each monthly sheet that locks in my keycap choice for the entire month. If I change caps mid-month, I start a new row with a note saying "keycap swap — previous data not comparable." It also has no guidance on room acoustics. Testing a switch in a bare bedroom with hard floors gives you a completely different sound profile than testing it in a carpeted living room with curtains. The workbook silently assumes your environment is constant. It usually isn't. I now write the room conditions in the header of each sheet. It takes ten seconds and has prevented me from claiming a switch "sounds worse" when really it's just that I tested it with the window open during thunderstorm season. If you're looking for something more rigid, the mechanical keyboard discord has a shared Google Sheet that auto-formats your entries, but it requires constant internet access and the formatting breaks if you merge cells. The PDF workbook is slower to fill out but it doesn't corrupt.

Practical Setup Walkthrough

Open the PDF. Print it or load it into your annotation app. At the top of the first page, write today's date, your board model, plate material, and keycap profile. These stay fixed for the entire month. Below that, each row is a switch. Column one is the switch model. Column two is the spring weight. Column three is whether you lubed it and with what. Column four is your relational note comparing it to the previous switch in the list. Column five is a sound descriptor using the standard terms: thock, clack, thocky, clacky, pop, ping, muffled. Pick from those. Don't invent new ones mid-month. That's it. Fill it out over four weeks. At the end of the month, review the relational notes, not the individual descriptions. Look for patterns in how switches behave relative to each other, not in isolation. The workbook is a comparative tool. Treat it like one.