I also did a hypkx-mod this weekend. Unfortunately, my mod did not go as flawlessly. This was in part due to the inferior tools I had available, but also partly because the steel plate was not a perfect drop-in replacement after cutting, and had to be modified even further than hypkx's did.
I used a (pretty bad) hand saw which of course had no trouble sawing the plastic, but struggled with the metal. But it still worked, even though the plate wasn't cut perfectly (luckily you cannot see that once it's in the case). On the other hand I bought a new power drill so it was fun not only to bolt-mod, but also much much easier to do the cutouts with the power drill and then sand the edges to make them rectangular.
This worked and the first fit tests seemed promising. However, fitting the completed assembly into the case showed that the plate was not a perfect replacement. The whole assembly had to moved slightly up and to the left. It was so far to the right that some keycaps were getting stuck where they made contact with the case (CTRL, F4).
For this, I had to modify both holes that hold the keyboard in place on the bottom case. No, not only the second hole I had drilled myself. It was also needed to modify the first, original hole on the left side. I could make it work, thanks to the assortment of metal files I had laying around, but it was really a lot of work. I spent the better part of this weekend on it, around 3-4 hours on saturday, 6-8 hours on sunday and two hours today. The result is satisfactory, but slightly less than perfect. Perhaps you can still see it on the picture that the assembly is sitting slightly too low and to the right. The problem is that the bigger you make the holes on top of the plate, the less secure the assembly sits in the case. I can already move the assembly around in the case now, but only using some force (it does not happen during normal typing).
Maybe it was the combination of components. I sawed apart my first IBM, a '95 Lexmark Model M, and tried to fit it in a '87 IBM and a '93 Lexmark SSK case. I had these fit issues in both cases. It had to be that one, it was always the IBM board which felt best in my opinion, despite being the newest one. The springs were the most snappy and after taking it apart I also found that the barrel plate still feels incredibly solid, which is great considering I recently had to glue an older IBM SSK barrel frame back together. Another factor was the plate, I knew I couldn't use an older IBM M because they have thicker plates, and I only had this crappy hand saw.
I only feel a little bad for taking apart a working M. Luckily, I got it quite cheap, for 25€ (a few years ago, before the big mechanical keyboard craze started).
So, thanks for the tutorial hypkx!
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Word of warning: Results may vary and this may cost you your weekend
