Pt 5 - WORST * CHRISTMAS * EVER

My nephew constructed a tower for his tiger to live on..

Just before he body slammed it.

The AEG

The Remington 7: It's just a little dirty, it's still good - It's still good. 

Bar-lock, baby, Yeah! 

Say hello to my little friend.... 

Update... Backdate... Update... Sheepdate...

I've really neglected a few parts of my blog lately. I constantly forget to add to my 'Revered Typoverse' column down the right hand side of my page here, and I feel I've offended a few people by not adding their usually quite well written blogs.

A major mistake of mine was to not include the Davis Typewriter Works blog:
Davis typewriter works.

I read this blog anytime I see a new addition, and I've been really enjoying the videos that the guys have been putting up on Youtube. There is a real feel of energy between the Davis boys in their videos, and they present refreshingly well and the two of them just seem to bounce off each other.
Will Davis youtube channel. 

*  *  *

I was excited to learn last night that John Lavery has finally gotten around to starting his blog. He's put up a great write-up of his efforts to repair a Kmart typewriter. His blog is still a work in progress, and he informed me that he'll be including more pictures (and maybe video?) in the future. But right now, like all of us when we first started out blogs he's just finding his form. 

John has a lot of great knowledge and memories, and it is brilliant to see this being used in his blog. 

John's blog can be found here:-

McTaggart's Typewriter Workshop.

I think we should give John plenty of support with his blogging adventures. He's got a lot of great stories to tell, and I think this is a great medium for him to tell them. 

*  *  *

Something I have also neglected is that brilliant website that Ted has put together that lets you search the Typosphere, check out people's typewriters and reference serial numbers to get an idea of the age of your machine. 

It is so much more than a serial number database. I had started to put together a list of my machines on there, but I haven't updated it in ages. It only reflects about half of my collection - and I've yet to get my more interesting machines photographed on there as yet. 

I think Ted has done a brilliant job thus far, and I thank him for the wonderful work that he's done. His site is so much easier to use than the previously ubiquitous TW-DB.

Here tis' 

The Typewriter Database.

*  *  *

I'll be trying to update more of your blogs onto my site whenever I can, but if you feel I have neglected yours - just drop me a line and say 'Hey, what about me'! Don't be shy. The typosphere is a great place to support each other, and if I haven't listed you - it isn't because I'm snobbing you. It is usually because my head is too far up my arse to have remembered to add you. 

Happy Typewriter Day! (internationally)

 

This lasted two minutes, before I put a towel down, stripped the machine's shell off and tackled the muck properly. 

The end result was worth it:

 

Our DSL modem and router packed it in sometime on Friday, and I was largely on a digital detox of my own for the weekend - the exception being that I still had net on my iPhone. Maybe I should just accidentally drop that next time.

Come Sunday afternoon I had blissfully enjoyed a lot of quality time with my new SM1. But more on that story later. The other 3 people in this house of 4 were rather desperate to get their 'net back. So, off we went to Officeworks, and got a brand-spanking-new DSL+ router, for more than I have spent on all but 1 of my typewriters. And going by our history with electronics here, it will probably fry and die in two years. Compare that to the longevity of this SM1.

I got some good writing done today too, after I had to make a pretty major repair to the SM1 which was sadly unexpected. It still needs some work on the escapement (it often jams after I release the carriage shift) but can I say... such a beautiful machine! Have you ever seen one like it? And there still was some ink in the ribbon!

Happy Typewriter Day! Love your typewriter, and it will love you.

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. 

Hey now, hey now, my noiseless is back.

 Why just write at home?

Sometimes my projects can get a little beyond my skill and ability. I pride myself on my lateral thinking and problem solving capacity. But like everyone, I sometimes can get locked into an intellectual box that I just can't find my way out of. In times like this, it is best to just stop what you are doing and pack it up. Coming back to a problem with a fresh attitude and set of eyes can often help. Forcing things in situations like this, can often just see you doing further damage and while increasing your stress.

One of these 'boxed up'  projects has been slumbering in my cupboard since last year. That is, until just recently when I awoke to an email from the 3D printer, Shapeways, telling me that someone had ordered one of my carriage levers.

It was Mike over at Clickthing, who had just purchased a beautiful Remington Noiseless - as seen here.

The trouble was that while I had designed this part with considerable effort, and even installed it into my own machine, I had yet to actually get the typewriter working. A couple of big issues had stood in my way last year, and I more or less had relegated the machine to the back of the cupboard.

Mike has also had to confront some of the these same problems as well. Not only did he have a broken lever, but he also discovered that the drawband for the mainspring was also shot - and very difficult to replace.

With Michael Clemens rapidly making progress on his machine, I thought I had better get off my arse and  perhaps finish my own. So I busted it out of the cupboard, slapped it on my desk, and tried to ignore the collective half dozen or so hours I had burned trying to get it going in the past.

And, within an hour or so I had the machine mostly working. Much to my surprise.

 Let's talk about the lever.

For those who haven't seen my previous blog about producing this part, here it is.

I wish I had my own 3D printer - even just one that does plastic, so I could have done a couple of cheap prototypes before I printed the main product. Instead, while the lever was quite cheap to print, posting to Australia turned out to be hideously expensive, so I just did the best I could with the design and produced the main.

As such there were a few things about the design that I only learned were wrong when I had it bolted into the machine. There's no fatal errors in my design that makes it unusable, but the design could still do with a revision.

Firstly, as mentioned before the part needs to be drilled out to be usable. No big deal, and it gives the hole a better fit anyway. But it is something that I can fix with a re-design.

Secondly, the angle of the lever is a fraction out. Coupled with a curve that the original didn't have, it means that the lever can knock on the side of the paper when you use it. It wouldn't have been a problem if this machine wasn't designed in a way - that it had the paper sticking up and out of the typewriter at an absurd angle. This was easily rectified by just shifting the paper locator across to the right a bit. No big deal, but I could have done better. Then again, so could have Remington. In the next version of this machine they put in a proper paper table that didn't have the paper jutting out into the air stupidly, and in the way of the lever.

My understanding is that even with the original lever, this posed something of a problem.

Third: I needed to put a chamfer onto the edge of the tiny square knob that slots into the machine. This can be easily filed into it, as it only needs to be small. But without it, when you unfold the lever for use, it occasionally catches on a small metal piece that it should just slide over. All you need to do is push the lever a little bit towards the back of the machine (don't worry, it is made to do this) and just move it past the obstruction.

No big deal, but Michael may need to be mindful about this when his turns up. Eventually I'll revise the design.


Let's talk about mainsprings.

Like Michael, I had a broken drawband.

Michael, for the record, you cannot.... I repeat, cannot... Simply tie a new string to a piece of the old one. Why? Because the lumpy knob brushes and catches on parts in the typewriter. Cut your loses, and cut that string and get rid of as much of it as you can.

And while you're cutting - on the side of the drum with that biggest lip, cut yourself an angled grove like the one in the photo above. This is similar to how the drum on the portable Royal typewriter of this era is set up, and it works perfectly.

Just knot your line, and slip the string into the grove. Have the knot facing outwards of the drum on the flat side, and wrap your string onto it. Be careful when winding the spring though, as you might catch your finger on this grove if you accidentally let the drum slip while winding. I made sure that I had enough string on the line to wrap around the drum at least once, with the carriage fully extended along its tracks.


Now. Let's talk about Rollers.

One of the biggest problems that stopped me in my tracks last time, were the crystallized rollers. These were fossilized to the point that the hardened rubber inside of the cracks sparkled in the light. They had flats-pots, cavernous cracks and hardness that was almost diamond like. Suffice to say, they were pretty freakin' useless. The platen was also as slippery as a cockney con-man.

The platen was easy to resolve as it hadn't cracked, and it at least still sort of felt like rubber. I just rubbed horizontally across it once with a piece of course sandpaper, which gave it plenty of traction.

However the rollers were quite different.... but.... have a look at this!

That's one sexy recovered roller.

I've been experimenting with producing my own rubber parts of late, and it nicely payed off with this typewriter. I'll blog on this in the near future.

 

The machine now works. It still has some problems to resolve, but it is now a largely working example of a Remington Noiseless. When I showed it operating to the long-suffering Ms Jane, she exclaimed "Wow! It's silent. Feel free to type with this one anytime". 

I suspect she was hinting that my typewriters are noisy.

I think I have hit the boundaries  of what I fix on this typewriter at this stage. But it has shown me that I have learned quite a bit since I started toying with these machines, and I am learning quite quickly - while coming up with some great solutions to problems I'm often facing.

I also hope that Michael finds something here that can help him. Best of luck Michael!

Opening the box...

 

 

*Sigh* I wish that I could just get 1 machine in the mail that didn't need repair! 

See the rather crucial saw piece hanging down? It's supposed to be straight across the typewriter.

 

 My SG1, stepping in when my computer fails.

I really want to get this machine working. I have wanted a push-rod Alder for some time, and this machine seems to fit the Art Deco direction of my collection. Which typewriter gods do I need to make a sacrifice to, to get this machine working again?