/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I'm here with a bit of a weird one:
I'm doign a small side project, using a keyboard. Since I'm a rather frugal person, I tried keeping cost as low as possible and got a free keyboard (I found it on the street, still works, had to clean it a bit though).
What I am trying to do is cut it in half, and connect the traces again, with wires, so I have two functioning halfes.
This would mean I would not have any problems with the IC, as I would not touch it.
It's a shitty rubber dome one though (pic related) and I can't really solder stuff to it, because it would melt.
Any ideas how to still do it or does it make more sense to just buy a used shitty keyboard with an actual PCB?


Also if I do decide to get a cheap used pcb keyboard, I never tried cutting traces and replacing them with wires, it probably makes sense to just cut the trace and instead of attaching the wire to the trace, look for the closest contact right?