An eBay oddessy.

 

Many of you may remember this Olympia of mine from last year. It is a near pristine Olympia SM3 which I used for a special purpose during a prolonged difficult period at work.

 

There's a bit of a story behind this typewriter though, which I think is worth telling. Many of the typosphere have tales of anguish and grief of buying on ebay. and while much of the trauma appears to center around the packing and postage of these items, there's often plenty to be said about the sellers themselves.

But what happens when you go and collect your own purchases, instead of having them posted to you?

I've been using ebay for easily a decade now, and I've collected purchases from many interesting locations. One of my first unusual collections was an Apple IIc that I picked up from a alternative lifestyle commune located on the outskirts of Melbourne.

As for typewriters, the pickups have been consistently interesting. Nothing ever seems particularly straight-forward, and this Olympia SM3 was no exception.

I was worried I was going to pay too much for this machine. It was just a smidge above the $50 mark, and no one else had bid. The photos of the machine told me nothing - not even the colour. They were blurry, and tinted a very warm orange. I could tell from the photo that it was complete, and I suspected that it had a script typeface (which it didnt) so I put down a bid which won uncontested.

The seller didn't invoice me, or even contact me after the sale. After two days I contacted them asking for the invoice, and three days later I got a message:

pickup d bay
call (sellers number) before pickup see you this afternoon greg

D-Bay...

D-bay is the local name for the suburb of Brisbane actually known as Deception Bay. It an area made up of cheap 1970's and 80's housing estates, and a few older 1960's farming homes. Council planning of the area 4 decades ago was been awful, and it soon became something of an isolated lower-middle class backwater and a cultural wasteland.

 The deception bay cultural hub: Booze, pizza, fishing tackle and two supermarkets side by side.

I didn't call Greg. I mailed him to inform him that I couldn't come that day, but I would drop by later in the week. Greg replied with his address, and simply said 'call 15 minutes before you come'.

So, on a Wednesday afternoon I called him - just as I was collecting my car from a service. It took me about 20 minutes to get to Greg's place, which would have been shorter if the Tom Tom app on my phone didn't do all kinds of weird backflips and spin-arounds.

I pulled into the small court that his house was located in, and I was confronted by an awesome sight. While most of the houses around Greg's place were run-down weatherboard shacks and were littered with car parts and rusted hulks, he lived in a towering 80's white painted double story arched-fronted monstrosity with a 6 foot high iron picket fence. The garden behind the fence featured concrete fountains with cherubs and dragons, and mini Grecian pillars. 

Ahhhhh the Greeks. I'd expect to see this kind of thing in Melbourne rather than  Brisbane. It all felt very out of place.

But something else was not right. Not by a long-shot. There were security cameras bolted to the top of almost every support post of the fence. Not just little ones, but 1.5 foot long armored cameras. There were 4 of them in total, and every one of them faced out onto the street in a different direction. Not only that, but they were so heavy that some of the fence posts had started to sink and topple with the weight.

I looked through the fence and I could see a guy sitting on a chair in the middle of the driveway. I called out to him, but he didn't seem to hear me. However his dogs did. The two of them raced towards me growling viciously, and almost decapitated themselves trying to get through the fence. They seemed to be some kind of Shih-tzu/Piranha cross.

I took a guess that the sitting fellow was Greg, and I subsequently called out his name.

This time he responded. He jumped up from his chair in an awkward fashion, and had a very goofy smile on his face. He was about 6'7", and lumbered with a clear lack of self-consciousness and grace.

"Scott"! he called out, as though I was a missing friend. "Is that you"?

"Hey", I replied - with all the self-consciousness that Greg was missing.
"Come in! Don't worry about the dogs, they wont hurt you".

'They won't hurt me'? I wondered to myself. 'They're freakin' Piranha on legs!

I pushed the gate open, almost crunching the dogs as I did. They rushed around the gate to meet me, and the jumped up my legs and propped against me with their paws while licking my fingers lovingly.

"GO on, Get"! Greg yelled to the dogs, sweeping a bit of a kick that missed them. They dogs quickly scurried off to a spot somewhere to the back of the property, and then started growling at each other.

"So, you want the typewriter".
Before I could answer Greg, he turned and disappeared into his garage. There were no cars parked in there, and there was a car-port that had been extended onto the front of it for the cars to park under. The garage was filled with rows of cupboards and wooden shelves. On each shelf was an array of trinkets of almost every kind you could thing of. They were incredibly neatly organized, and some were even labeled.

"This is my business" Greg explained to me. "Do you want to go and look? This is the stuff that I'm selling on ebay - Go look'!

I declined Greg's enthusiastic invite, and he seemed disappointed that he wasn't going to show me his haul of goods. But his eyes lit up again the moment he remembered the typewriter that was in his hands.

"It's like new"! He said as he slapped the familiar SM3 case down onto a table. He then stuffed his oversize frame onto a kiddies chair in front of it, and opened the case. "It's a real ripper"!

Greg started banging furiously at the keys before exclaiming "See! Give the keys a try".

He  wasn't kidding. The case was a bit worn, but the machine inside it glistened like it was brand new. There was barely a hint of dirt on it, and it sparkled in the afternoon sunlight like it was a mirror. The machine was perfect. Almost disappointingly perfect - as there appeared nothing for me to fix.

We exchanged pleasantries and money, and I soon had the awfully heavy case in my hands. But he wasn't going to let me leave without showing me at least some of his other treasures. He was currently working on a miniature indoor hydroponic plant kit. I remember seeing one of them a few years ago being flogged in an informertial that marketed it as 'Your indoor fresh herb garden - right there in your kitchen'. He was trying to get it working, but couldn't figure it out. I guess he picked it up at a garage sale, and there was a piece missing. I told him what bit I thought was missing, and without warning he disappeared back into his garage then came back with something that would perfectly substitute for the operation of the missing part.

"Great! That's going on ebay this afternoon now".

There were old tools, garden gadgets and interesting cutlery. When he got to showing me the ceramic cats, I decided it was past time to got the frak out of there - so I politely took my leave. He just simply stopped talking to me, and nodded his head and waved a good-bye. I made my way out the gates, and looked back over my shoulder. He was standing at the gate just watching me go to my car.

The dogs rushed up and started to bark furiously again. I drove off and left him to his treasures, his Grecian ruin garden, and his dogs. 

I got the machine home and put it on the dining room table. The machine was immaculate, and didn't have a scratch on it. The chrome hadn't flaked or bubbled or pockmarked, and the machine's operation felt as though it was new off the factory floor. It was incredibly sharp and unhindered. The platen was hard, and the ribbon was mostly dry, but I gave the machine a good go.

And I was impressed. I mean, really impressed. As I started to get used to the keyboard, my speed picked up. Before long I was typing faster than I had ever typed on a typewriter keyboard. I was getting close to the speed that I was capable of on my computer's keyboard - that is to say, around 80 - 90 words a minute at full trot.

I looked closely at this keyboard, and found that the keytops themselves were individually spring loaded. Amazing! According to various sites that I read, this was made to allow the key to stay level when pressed - sort of like how my Bijou does. However, I'm not convinced. In real terms I can make these keys easily bounce off my fingers if I just lightly jab at them, which while typing really seems to let me just casually gloss across the tops of the keys with great speed. Or at least that's what I think I am doing. It has hard to really assess what my fingers are doing when they are working at their fastest.

After I had played with this typewriter for a while, I remembered that I had a disfunctional SG1 down in the shed, waiting some serious investigation as to why it wasn't working. I was so impressed with the engineering of the SM3, that I then decided that I would attempt to tackle the difficult repair with a higher priority.

I often think about that eccentric seller, and wonder if I'll end up buying off him again. The other professional ebay seller I have bought off on ebay has had two visits from me. Maybe there's a nice little supply of typers near by. 

How did I miss this?

I think I have my anthem.

But how, honestly, had I not come across this before? I love it! And it isn't even new.

Did I mention I love it?

I love it!

OMG! Download it free, at Bandcamp - HERE.

An anthem for the insurgency perhaps? Shame they picked a Valentine for the artwork.

For those not familiar with the original track this was based on, here it is:

Mysteries solved! Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. Possibly not.

Remember this typewriter?

If not, you may need to check out this blog.

Well, I can reveal that this machine is pretty much guaranteed to have had Italiano keyboard. I came to this conclusion about half an hour after talking to John on the phone.

It was something painfully obvious that I had overlooked on the first assessment, that I gave myself a massive face-palm after I discovered it.

I'd been talking to John about how difficult it would be to transfer and re-solder type stubs between typebars. John mentioned that he'd actually done it 'thousands of times' before, and that it was a fairly routine repair.

After I put the phone down, some of the discussion seemed to be still ringing in my ears. So I grabbed the Hermes Baby out, and had a good hard look at the type stubs.

And what do you know! Two particular stubs had a modest excess of solder on them.

The soldering job was professionally done, and until I looked very closely, I hadn't actually spotted it. 

And what are the keys? Well... W and Z. No other keys displayed this over-solder, and I'm pretty confident that the machine's keyboard was originally a QZERTY setup. In other words - Italiano! 

As stated in my blog previously, this typewriter was purchased new from the dealer rather soon after the typewriter was manufactured. 

My guess is that despite the influx of Italians into Australia, the dealer of this machine found this stock item had been lingering in his inventory for a bit too long, so they got one of their technicians to swap the keys to give it a better chance of selling. Either that, or supply of Hermes Babys were so short, that this machine had its type swapped so that the salesman had a machine to offer within what may have been a pressured amount of time. 

So, I'm calling it. I think this is firmly an Italiano machine which had been converted by the dealer before it was sold - new.

Meanwhile.... back at the ranch.

Many of us from the typosphere are very conscious about the sustainability of our activities, and we enjoy the fact that our typewriters use renewable materials and have a very limited carbon footprint.

But, what about our websites? You may ask. They use power hungry severs, and all kinds of stuff!

Well! I think I have the answer as to how the typosphere is powered as well.


The idea came to me while I was reading this interview with Christopher Lockett - the director of "The Typewriter (in the 21st Century)". It was when I read the quote: "Richard Polt, a professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati — he runs the Typosphere, a group of websites related to typewriters" that I formulated my theory, which led me to and amazing discovery.

Now, having never received orders or directions from Richard Polt about my blog, I was trying to figure out exactly what he was running. 
So I dug deep. Deeper than I've ever dug before. Deeper than a drunken backhoe operator trying to see "how deep this thing can dig"! Deeper than a oil rig can drill. Deeper than any random conspiracy theory goes. Deeper than the X-Files.

Yeah. I dug deep. And you know what I found? 

Yeah, that's him.. Richard. Single handedly powering the servers that run our blogs. What a great guy! Now I know what they meant by 'running the typosphere'. 

So, I declare this blog..... 

YEAH! 

Discplaimer: Powered by Polt is a non profit organisation that might not actually exist. If you are looking for someone to power your oversized computer or plasma television, please, throw the things out. Get a typewriter and got and type out in the real world and away from your television. Although, make sure you have a friend that has a computer, so you can occasionally come back and read this blog. 

I hope Richard has a sense of humour. Hi Richard! This was done with the upmost regard for you... and your running!

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Translation please.

Are you German? Have you been driving in circles Autobahn in boredom?

Russian, and drinking away your despair with Vodka? 

French, and wasting your days staring at that awful countryside while painting it? 

Well! Drive, despair and stare no more!

The Filthy Platen now has Google Translate™! 

Alright, so Google translate is nothing new. A few other blogs already have widgets for it, and I felt it was about time that TFP got it too.

Behind the scenes there's been a bit of discussion lately between the old typewriter guard, and the young whipper-snapper typosphere. A common theme in this discussion has been the language barrier, as many of the older collectors are located in Europe.

 

So I felt it was time to take Google's great little translation app and attach it to my lovely little blog. As you can see, it is up the top right hand side there. Just a word of warning - it doesn't translate my typecasts...

 

... yet.

 

 Viva la Filthy Platen!

Where the wild mechanics roam....

I'd loaded Ruby the Exxy (my car) up with a load of typewriters  and headed south to Beaudesert.  It was a nice day for a drive in the country, and John had suggested that I come out and have a bit of a typosphere hangout with him. On this occasion, I had the company of 'the impatient typewriter mechanic' - Steve Snow in the car with me who also had brought a handful of machines along for the ride.

Steve was great company for the drive, and the weather could not be more perfect for the trip. Last time I was down that way, the temperatures were exceeding 40 degrees C. This time, it was a modest 22. And soooo much more comfortable.

Which was just as well, as we spent at least 7 hours in John's workshop.

John had invited me to bring whatever machines needed the his experienced hand to look at. So I took the opportunity to bring some of my more interesting machines, which also had some faults that had to this stage proven a bit beyond my current skills.

I had three machines of a defective nature, and I had also brought two just to 'show and tell'. The 6th machine in my car was a machine I was giving John, in exchange for a surplus small air compressor that he had.

Steve also had some machines for John to look at. Chiefly, he had a Smith Premier 10A that had a few issues that he wanted to see if John could do something about.

Steve made some really interesting progress on his machine, and I think he'll be writing about it quite soon. So I'll let him tell you all about it.

Meanwhile, John took a crack at fixing the three machines of mine that I'd brought with me. We made good progress on my Olympia SG1, but it is still a bit munted in a couple of keys. We identified the problem with my beautiful pearl Olympia Monica, and a part is on its way to me already courteously of Barry Fielden in the UK - via Will Davis's Portable Typewriter Yahoo group.

John also blitzed adjusting my Remington 5's action, and after the machine's extensive repairs it is now a 100% working piece of beautiful machinery. But more on that machine soon.

However, the two machines that I had brought just to show - also got a round on John's workbench. I was happy with the operation of both machines, but now John has assessed some problems that I hadn't even thought about, and without even thinking he was making adjustments and suggestions on the two of them. It seems that John's repair man instincts seem to be forever in his blood. 

Both Steve and I had a great day. Not only did we get to get our hands on some real typewriter service tools, but we both learned an awful lot from John. I've learned how to use some of the professional's tools, and I picked up quite a few little techniques.

Watching John in action is great. He just rips through stuff that usually takes me a lot more time to achieve. And while he worked, he he was telling us magnificent stories about his working days that are very entertaining and interesting. John's been talking about getting his own blog going, which I am very excited about. Steve and I are going to give him a bit of a hand where we can.

Another great part about visiting John's place, is that we get to have a look through some of his machines. A lot of his 400+ machines are still packaged up and concealed in cardboard, bubble wrap, newspaper and old carpet. Every so often Steve and I would see a hint of something that looked sort of familiar, and we'd ask John if we could take a look. John was quite obliging, and we got to crack open the wrapping and have a look at some magnificent machines.

I was especially wrapped when I got to get my hands on a gorgeous Groma Kolibri in Burgundy. It typed better than I expected, and I now feel an urge to hunt one down for my own collection. They are such an amazing little machine!

It is easy to spend all day in John's workshop, and I always love hearing about what he's got on his workbench that is currently being worked on. Both Steve and John are great to hang with, and it is a real privilege  to been able to spend the day with them. 

Thanks Guys. Hope to catch up again soon.

Hey, Robert Messenger! Meet Kermit.

One or two of Rob's recent blogs sent me giggling to the keyboard.

Rob, Meet Kermit. Kermit, Meet Rob.

Kermit had been on loan to Baroness till recently, when it was at risk of being damaged during a home moving exercise. So for the time being, Kermit is hanging out at my place again. Can I say, I think Kermit is a wonderful typewriter, that has some beautiful curves and features. Thanks for stopping by, Kermit.

Mind you, I just can't type on Kermit in the say way that I can with one of my Hermes 3000 machines. I keep forgetting that I need to slap the keys - just a little harder. But he is a fine, and beautifully lightweight typewriter.

Round 2 (of 3) - Scott v's the Royal P

Round 2 - Scott v's the Royal P. The Royal strikes back. 

For those that missed round 1, it can be found - here.

Warning: This blog entry is rated MA - for mature audiences. 
*Occasional coarse language. Which has nominally been bleeped out for you protection.
*Low level violence.
*Frequent bad movie references.

The relative peace from my earlier days was now broken, and the fighting had become heavy and brutal. The battle of wills between the chrome Royal P and myself was now becoming intense. Tools and parts lay strewn across the battlefield. Blood and been shed numerous times from my fingers, and my battle-cry had become a single word that started with an 'F'.

I tried to asses if the escapement on the royal was repairable, but the Royal P clutched it firmly in its heart and I couldn't pry the thing from the grip of the rapidly deteriorating screws. It seemed hopeless.

I attempted to ease off the pressure on the draw band one afternoon, in the hope that it would allow the escapement to catch. But my attempt to do so ended in the bloodiest battle of this war. As I released the spring, the coil inside the drum erupted and shattered inside. I heard the spring implode with gusto, and then sound like a baby's rattle as the pieces flung about internally. The initial crackling sound it made as it gave out was as surprising as much as it was sickening.

It was like I had been punched in the chest. I sat back and caught my breath, before letting out a long and pained battle cry - that also happened to start with an 'F'. 

I gripped the platen tight and raised it above my head, and hollered: "You can take my Main-spring. But you will never take my FREEEDOOOOOOM". 

And then I dropped the platen onto myself, and further worsened my dignity injury.

*SIGH*

So the decision was made to seek out a possible parts machine, or a machine for transplanting. I remember Robert Messenger talking about how Royal didn't make a lot of changes to their machines after the first Royal P, so I pulled out my old black Royal that I had restored back to working order some months before, and had a bit of a cursory look to see if there could possibly be a way of using parts from a later model. 

The Black Royal - repair in progress.

It was around this point that I observed that the frame on my Royal Arro, and the frame on my chrome Royal P were pretty much identical in their structure. I looked at the anchor points below the frame, around the ribbon covers, and leading out to the keyboard. Structurally it was very similar. Even the clearances on this segment shifted machine's carriage and basket appeared to be a good fit. 

I didn't want to destroy my black Royal, so I didn't pull it apart to see if I could do it. Instead, I powered up eBay and gumtree and had a good, hard look any kind of cheapish Royal portable typewriter of this era. 

28 days later......

I awoke one morning to see my iPhone screen blink with emails shooting along its face. Blue icons with blurry white text that I couldn't read flooded the black glass. I put my glasses on, and the white text came sharply into focus.

Ebay: You have won!

Ebay: Invoice for....
Ebay: Please pay for your item. 

Ebay: The seller has contacted you. 

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" I said as I rolled back over and went back to sleep. It was a Saturday. Saturdays are not typewriters on eBay days. Well, not Saturday morning at any rate.

The typewriter in question was an identical machine to my Black Royal - right down to the "Made in the British Empire" decal being stuck on the front at a haphazard angle. The machine was rusty and crusty, and looked like it was looking forward to retirement, but I was sure I could rejuvenate the mechanical side of it and get it going again. 

On Sunday, the seller was contacted. Addresses and phone-numbers were exchanged, and I organized a time and a date to get to the sellers house. I didn't want to collect late evening, so they gave me a 30 minute window of opportunity to collect the typewriter from 4pm on the Monday. I finished work at 3:30pm that day, so it was going to be a little tight getting to their place in time. 

Enter Roxanne:

I chose my speediest traffic-dodging vehicle for the task: Roxanne the motorbike. I always have Occy-straps at the ready on the bike, so it wasn't going to be a problem transporting the machine on the luggage rack. I had a blissfully chilled ride to work in the morning, and everything seemed to be going to plan. But by the afternoon I was anxiously looking at the BOM site radar, as I could see something that looked like a storm coming across 'the range', near Toowoomba. 

Expecting the worst, I shuffled through the cupboards at work for a plastic bag that would be big enough to cover the typewriter. Much to my dismay the biggest I had, that didn't have holes in it or would dissolve in water was a big yellow clinical waste bag that had several huge bio-hazard symbols on it. Not to worry... It was only there as a 'just in case'. I was pretty sure I had plenty of time before the storm hit.

I stuffed my earbuds into my ears, put my helmet on, and Ilet Karen - the voice on my TOMTOM app, direct me to the address. Unfortunately some of the roads leading to the seller's house were still being reconstructed after the 2011 floods, and as such I had to sort of find my own detour. Time was starting to look very tight, but eventually I got there.

I was given several tips by the seller about how to use a typewriter (Really? You turn the knob which turns the big rubber roller to put paper in? Who knew! The lever is the return key? Fancy that!) before long money was exchanged, and the sale was done. I had mere minutes left of the allotted time, and I was pretty happy to have got the transaction done. Meanwhile, what apperred to be an army of children had surrounded me to check out this typewriter.

I strapped the Royal onto the back of my bike... Took a photo for blogging purposes, and then took off, with Karen again in my ears - telling me how to get home. 

Rev it up, Rev it up, little boy and ride.... Or write. Your choice.

 I sped and weaved through traffic with the greatest of ease. Over my left shoulder I could see the storm clouds closing in, but I sighed with relief as soon as I when back on a familiar road, and ever so close to home. There was a traffic jam at some roadworks, but no matter... I just darted around them. I was stopped at a set of lights, looking down the length of a very busy main road - unaware that tragedy was about to strike. 

As always, it is something small and unexpected that starts the tragedy. In this case, it was an itch on my neck. As I took off from the lights, I accelerated hard ahead of the traffic. I felt my engine sputter a little, but it still accelerated just fine - until I took my hand off the accelerator to scratch that itch. 

The engine just simply shut down, dead. Deader than a dead parrot. Deader than the main-spring on my Royal P. Deader than the sales of the HIghlander 2 DVD. (gosh, that really was a sh*t movie). 

I coasted to the side of the road, put the kickstand down and told myself 'don't panic'. Just then a Vogon starship..... oh wait..... 

I tried to start it again a few times, let the engine dry out from being flooded and then tried to start it again. No good. I popped off the seat, checked the fuses and found they were fine. I wiggled them a bit, tried to start the engine, and still didn't get any life.

So, I popped out the tools from the little caddy on the side of the bike, and pulled out the spark plugs to see if I was getting any spark. No spark... nothing. I checked the spark  making box thingy (how's that for a technical term) and all connections were fine. I resolved that the magic little black box itself must be shot. 

A guy on a Triumph Boneville, suavely parked his bike next to mine. Small drops of rain started to gently patter down around to us, and he asked me if he could help. He was a member of the 59 club, and was on his way to a meet. We both stood there looking at my motorbike, talking dirty finger-nails and trying to look as manly as possible without scratching our balls. 

"I don't actually know anything about the mechanics of a motorbike. I hope you know what you're doing" he eventually said. "But I can offer you a lift". I politely declined, he gave me a card for the club and suggested that I should look them up "when you get it (Roxanne) working again", and then took off into the slightly spitting weather. 

My bike was going to need to be towed. I didn't have the number for the tow guy in my phone, so I called up Ms Jane - who just happened to also be riding today, and had used the guys towing services a couple of times in the past. "You'll need cash", she reminded me on the phone. "About $100. He only takes cash. I'll message his number to you. Are you near an ATM"? Jane was always aware that I never carried much cash, and usually used EFTPOS for most transactions. 

The spitting rain started to turn into random fat drops of rain, and I could see that I was mere minutes away from a tropical down-pour. I reached into my bag and pulled out the big yellow Clinical Waste bag, and dropped the typewriter into it for protection from the elements, before strapping it back onto my bike. As I did so, I noticed the heavy traffic on the road near me started to slow even further. It seems that a big yellow bio-hazard symbol with bold lettering saying "Clinical waste" under it, is a bit of a head-turner. "Oh well" I thought, "at least no one was going to steal it".

I began to walk towards the Warner shopping center, which was about 1.5km back up the road. I HATE the Warner shopping center, but there was no avoiding it. You will never find a more wrenched hive of scum and villany. But I needed folding money. Just as I started to walk, the sky opened up with the fury of as much rain as it could possibly drop, and I was soaked to my toes within minutes. 

It took me 45 minutes to walk to the Warner shopping center and back, all the while I walked along a muddy roadside strip (because no one uses footpaths in Warner, as no one walks) and I was as miserable as I could possibly be. People - stunned at seeing someone 'walking' were yelling abuse at me from their cars. The traffic had slowed right down now (mostly because of the roadworks, partly because of my bio-hazard typewriter), and had a prolonged period of having to cop sh*t from lengthy row of Warner bogans in rust-bucket racers with big stereos, big exhausts, and a big complex about their small penises.

Somewhere... there was an in-bred kid playing a banjo. Or, knowing Warner, a plastic guitar and guitar hero.

I got the cash, walked back, and was surprised to not have received the number from Jane on my phone yet. So I called her.

"Where are you"? she asked.
"I'm about a K or so past Warner Tavern".

"Ohhhh" I could hear a whince in her voice "Funny the message didn't go through. I'll be there soon. Could you have picked a better spot?".
I could hear traffic noises around her, and I could tell that she was talking on her head-set while she was on her motorbike.

The rain started to ease a little as I waited, and then just stopped. Jane, on her big and shiny Yamaha V-Star pulled up next to me - virtually dry, and briefly looked at the Clinical waste bag with a confused look, before asking me what had happened.

"Show me it starting again" She said. So I did. I had put the bike back together, so I just sat on it, put the key in and gave it an attempted rev. Jane twiddled the accelerator for a bit, and then looked at the kill switch to the left of it.

"When did you turn this off" she asked while pointing to the switch. I looked, and saw that the switch was indeed to the 'off' position - which typically kills the engine dead.
"Eeeerm... I didn't switch that off" I replied. I turned the switch to on, gave the engine a bit of a squirt, and the bike again roared back to life. When I had lifted my hand to scratch that itch earlier, I must have accidentally knocked the switch. 

I again let out my Battle-cry starting an 'f', while Jane looked at me with a little bit of frustration. I on the other hand felt like an utter dickhead. We rode home, and I could see Jane shaking her head from time to time as I looked at her in the mirrors. 

I got home and sat the Royal out on the back deck of the house to inspect it. 

The machine had seen much better days. A fair bit of the chrome had flaked off, and parts of the typewriter were pretty dirt filled. But it wasn't horribly rusty, and the machine actually worked really well. This would have to be my first ever Royal portable that arrived in fully operating condition. 

A few days later I pulled the shell off the machine, and attempted to put the shell from the chrome Royal onto it. As I had estimated, the frame was almost a perfect fit - except of course for one very crucial difference. As I wrapped the shell around the frame, it seemed to end about 5mm to short. As it turns out, Royal were still using the same identical frame as the Royal P, but had welded an extra piece of metal onto the back of the typewriter, to give the shell at the rear a little more clearance - in order to keep it looking flush with the shell that was bolted onto the carriage. 

I was so... very, very close! I could just cut the metal off. The frame structure for the Royal P was still there, located behind a tack-welded piece of sheet-metal!. All I had to do was grind off the extra pieces, drill 4 holes and tap them, and I could have my chrome Royal working! With nicer, smoother black keys!

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't just 'chop' up a machine that still had plenty to offer. I knew I could use parts from both the original machine, and the newer one, and get a pretty awesome typewriter out of it. But I couldn't just kill off a great working Royal.

And it IS a great Royal. I bolted the shell back on, cleaned and serviced it and scrubbed up the metal a little while getting rid of the dirty bits and the corrosion. I now have two identical Royal typewriters, and I have no idea what to do with either of them. Does anyone want a Royal? No, seriously.

The chrome Royal was going to have to wait. I packed it up into a box, and dropped it down with a few other project machines. 

But it wasn't a long wait. About a month later I eyed off a Royal P on ebay with a shell in shockingly bad condition. If there ever was a machine that was born to be a donor. It was this one. I tapped in a figure into and hit enter and waited for the auction to finish.... Hoping no one else would bid.

But that's another story. 

Coming up in Round 3 - Scott v's the Royal P:

I fight with eBay buyers and sellers. 

Then do some rather painful work getting my chrome Royal back together.

And I add a special tool to my typewriter repair kit.