Understanding an Underwood

This is the only Underwood that I have in my home collection and I can't say that I love the touch right now. There is something gumming up the typebar. In reality I can only type about 10 words per minute, but the few bars that are free seem very responsive. The platen is shameful, but I expect that at nearly 77 years old, you wouldn't be tip-top anymore.

You're right, Typecast Ryan. This little typewriter has some classic lines.

I know that Underwood was thinking that having the touch selector move up for a lighter touch and down for a softer touch was a  stroke of genius. Sorry, boys. Up should be more tension. Down should be less tension. Be equating the switch with the sensation tends to mix up me up considering Underwood is alone in this nuttiness.

 

On a final note, wouldn't The Typebar be a cool name for a vintage-inspired watering hole? Drink names would be fun. I would suggest you try a Dry Ribbon, a Pitted Platen, or the Segmented Shift.

A Little Elbow Grease Makes All The Difference

The Remington Standard No. 12 is not an especially collectable typewriter. You can find them all over the place and this one (BZ73012) is from 1926. As you can see it was also pretty dirty. 

The styling is not exactly modern. The decals have a very non-1920s look to them, but Remington stuck with this design for many years. In fact, it was in production for nearly a decade. Keeping the styling of a product for 10 years is a little odd, especially for our modern consumer society. I digress. Interestingly, some 12s still featured the right-hand return, but this version featured a left-handed return.

There was dirt caked everywhere. 

The platen is rubbish. I need to either get it recovered or try Richard's shrink-tubing trick.

Is that a bug? It wouldn't be the first I ever found in a typewriter. After looking at the layers of dirt I was willing to spray it down on the side of the house. The weather was warm and the sun was out, so I had little fears of the thing rusting too badly. It was also easy to see that it had been kept in a damp environment at some point. There was surface rust in some places, but nothing too bad.

Spraying out a typewrter with the hose takes some guts. I've done it before with good success, however, I always have done it on a sunny and warm day. If it's too cloudy things might not dry as you intended. 

Normally, I cover up the keytops, but I wasn't able to tell if these key tops were cloisonné or maybe enamel. They don't have little circles of celluloid covering the letters and I felt confident that there would be no damage from the water. I tested out on one before I committed to the endeavor and it seemed to be pretty water-resistant. 

You can see the pre-existing rust. It is also clear to see that everything is much cleaner. I also had a much better time getting the segments to move properly.

I had taken all the body panels off earlier and started the process of polishing them with Meguiar's cleaner and polish. They were very grimy and it took a while, but the black gloss paint started to shine through.

I think that the final result is stunning.

There is a very old scratch near the screw at the bottom of the type bar scoop. It's old enough to have rusted. Some amateur was probably trying to fix something and mid reinstall the screwdriver slipped and scratched the body panel.

There is one small scuff on the back right that I could not get out. It's small and barely noticable. Strangely, there is a very fancy number two written on the bump-out under the 'e' in Remington. Something like that might have been for inventory control, but it is some sort of enamel paint; shiny and hard. 

Even though it was dirty this 12 was a solid machine to start with. Dirty standards tend to clean up nicely, but if the paint is oxidized you are out of luck. Polishing will make it look better, but it will never look as nice as a good paint job that has been preserved nicely. I can never tell empirically if the paint is good ahead of time. I usually get a gut feeling. 90% of the time my gut is right-on, but there have been times when I was spectacularly wrong.

And remember that a little elbow grease makes all the difference. 

I will leave this brag post with a closeup of my favorite detail of the 12; the margin release.

A Silent Tower

I started working on cleaning up a typewriter that has sat neglected for a while. It's this Sears Tower.

Many of you know it as a Skyriter and it is one in every aspect except name. This particular machine is missing the decorative paper arm cover. It is a common piece to find missing. 

I was looking out the sliding glass door at the butte behind our home. (There's another one in front of our house called Deem Hill.) The sky was a pale blue. A haze covered the finer delineations of the rock face. Falcons and eagles circled overhead slowly catching thermals rising and then falling. The hilly country of the Sonoran desert has a stark beauty. It takes time to learn to appreciate it, but the beauty is there to find.

I started to think about the name Tower. It's an odd name to give a typewriter. It makes me think of the towers of Silence that played a significant role in the funerary rights of the Zoroastrians. 

Was this little Tower left to decay out of sight? Will the carrion artists pluck key tops and repurpose them as horrible rings and necklaces? Who will sweep your brittle remains into the ossuary?

I happen to have another Tower from Ton S. This Tower is Presidential, the one above is a Chieftain.

A Chieftan of what? It's fitting that not too far from my home is an amazing museum: The Deer Valley Rock Art Center. At this off-the-beaten-path museum you can see petroglyphs dating back 7,000 years.  Could they be neolithic blog posts? Is this an heir to the kingdom of the Hohokam?

A rock and an idea. It could be the ultimate in distraction-free writing. 

Back to this typewriter. As with most 1950s Smith-Coronae, the sound-deadening material smells very bad. It has a must that can only be eliminated by removal. I was able to remove the offending odor and get to work on the dirty mechanism. It's not a big job, but it might take a few days.

The Typewriters Are A Hit and Oh, Brother!

Due to some scheduling difficulties, we were finally able to use the typewriters on Friday. Our Journal topics for Fridays are "freewrites" so it was perfect opportunity to have them used. They could take all the time they needed to get comfortable with the typewriter. I front-loaded instruction on Thursday with a small presentation all bout the CTP and some of the data behind using the typewriters. The Thursday presentation primed them for the excitement on Friday.

The sound of 20 typewriters tapping away is really very familiar. For three years my work day has been filled with the whack of type bars against papers and platens. I have grown so accustomed to the sound that the absence is more deafening than the presence.

Of all the classes who have used typewriters, this group was the most enthusiastic. They really loved giving it a chance. This group of kids really paid attention to the into diagram and had very little trouble getting started. You know something is a success when it's time to switch activities and their is an audible groan of disapproval. I think that over the course of the school year the typewriter love will increase.

I mention 20 typewriters because I have decided to keep 20 in constant rotation; moving out typewriters that become damaged or a little worn out. I have enough of a back stock that I can be a few months behind on repairs and still have 20 completely working typewriters. As always Royals make up a large portion of what students use, but there seem to be more and more Brothers moving through the ranks.

Brother typewriters have proven to be incredibly rugged and dependable. The harsh view I held of the Performer has been worn smooth by nearly three years of dependable service. I am nearly amazed at how student-proof they are. While the pile of Olivettis gets larger and larger, the brothers keep on working. In the course of repairing the few minor problems that so many of Brother's parts are completely interchangeable. Screws tend to be a uniform size. They are easy to work on because components (like the escapement) are easily accessible. The bottom line is that they can survive in my classroom and that is no easy feat.

I am slowly becoming a convert. They tend to grow on you. That brings me to one of the newest typewriters to make an appearance in the classroom. Ton S. spoke about this Brother in his blog. I got an email saying that he would like to send it on to my classroom rather than keep it. I was more than happy to take it off his hands. I had a couple of Smith-Coronae that needed to be retired for repairs. That funny little clasp they use for linking the segments tends to fail under heavy use. It's one of the perennial problems with 1950s Silents and their Galaxy siblings. Ton was a gentlemen of the first order and paid to have this shipped over to me. It arrived packed incredibly well, but the carriage was freewheeling just as Ton had described in his post. The fix did not hold.

Photo by I Dream Lo-Tech

The carriage would just spring all the way over to the marginal stop. It was freewheeling in the worst way. I cracked the case open to get a closer look. Just as Ton had described, there was a hairline fracture on one end of the escapement paddle (is that what they are called?). You know, its the thing that swings into place to stop the carriage from advancing more than one space.

I could see that the crack had caused the little prong of metal to be bent back so it was not engaging with the escapement wheel teeth. I looked at it closer and as soon as I touched it the whole enchilada fell apart. It was being held on by a thread. Clearly the trip over hill and dale proved to be too much for Ton's repair. The paddle was held in place by a pivoting screw and it was very easy to remove the part and have a closer look. I was able to save the little piece that fell off.

I looked at the piece and (initially) I thought that I would try to make a new piece out of some scraps I had around here, but I noticed that there was a vertical post attached to the underside. This little bit is part of the carriage release linkage. Pressing the carriage release button presses on this post and swings the paddle out of the way of the escapement wheel. Obviously, I wouldn't be able to manufacture a piece easily so I looked to fixing the piece I had.

Glue wouldn't be strong enough unless I had a very strong and powerful glue. Something like…J.B. Weld might do the trick. I looked at the piece and saw that the break was clean. There were no gaps when the two parts were put together. I would need to make sure that the J.B. Weld bridged the break to add to the strength. Also, the piece was fairly smooth. Sanding it well to create a key would be very important.

I took out my rotary tool and used an emery bit to roughen up all the sides that would touch the epoxy. I mixed up a small amount and glued the pieces together. I was totally prepared to have this not work at all, so with apprehension I let it sit until the epoxy cured. This was what emerged 24 hours later.

I reinstalled the piece in the typewriter and it works like a charm. Time will tell how well the epoxy will hold, but the package says it is rated strong at 3,000 PSI (That is tensile strength.) with shear strength of 1000 PSI. The proof is in the pudding. It works.

The joint is the weakest part and I assume that it will only be a matter of time before it fails. This, however, will buy me time until I find a suitable replacement.

P.S. Ton, you are awesome!

I Just Noticed

The right knob. Probably newer.

The left knob. Probably original.

1926-1927 Royal 10

Copper-Clad Ambassador: It's Mostly Done

So, here is the result of some hard work. I did not have the strength to disassemble the carriage to paint it, so that might be another project entirely. In case you are curious about the paint, I used a copper-colored Hammerite. I think it was Krylon. I could check if you were very interested.

Hermes Ambassador Pictorial

I have been working on the Hermes Ambassador renovation. I had originally intended to make it a Silver Surfer, but due to the variety of metals (both steel and aluminum) and the difficulty in making steel shine with mirror-perfection I decided to take a different tack.

Using the verdigris color of Hermes' typewriters as inspiration the Ambassador will look very different.

However, that is for another post. What I have here are a smattering of pictures of the base of this incredibly complicated typewriter. The carriage and all the shrouds have been removed for the important work, but this offers a rare glimpse inside the mechanism of this dual-ribbon monster.

Please enjoy.

The Saga of the Mexican Oliver

I have been on the quest for a Mexican Oliver for some time. They are nearly impossible to find here in the US. What makes a Mexican Oliver special? Well, I have found some pictures from Mercado Libre to give you and idea:

A Mexican Oliver is nickle plated on the bottom while still retaining the green paper table and front piece. I can glean no information about why the two-tone Oliver was so popular, but it's all you find in Mexico.

For a long while I felt as if I would never get a lead. Mercado Libra frequently has them for sale, but my inexperience with the language and fear of buying something so expensive so far away makes it prohibitive. I can't take a vacation to go look for one because there 32 states and one federal district and they could be hidden anywhere. But now there is a slight hope.

Andres, one of my students, has an uncle who is a journalist with a newspaper in Mexico City. He's spotty on the details because they have never met, but this summer he is taking a vacation to visit him. It was kind of Andres to offer to ask if he knew the location of one and I am sure that a journalist would know just the right people to contact.

So, this little quest is taking on a new dimension, but it's still exciting.

Another Restoration

So, by the picture below you can see that the next machine in my restoration queue is a Smith-Corona. I am in the process of eliminating some of the stickiness in a few of the keys. I have already tried PB Blaster, but there has been little improvement. The next option is a mechanical cleaning with a stiff toothbrush. The schedule for today is light, so I will have some time to devote to getting this one done.