Will you be my Valentine letter, you filthy googling pervert?

Cast your mind back a year, oh typosphere, and remember what happened on my blog on Valentine's day 12 months ago.

Actually, don't strain your memory cells too hard... Here's a recap: 

Last year, my tortured letter to the Valentine typewriter that I had repaired became item number 4 on google's image search. As such, many love-lorn boys and girls came to read my blog looking for inspiration for romantic prose - only to find a blog entry on how I wished to smash my Valentine to pieces lady McBeth style.

Well, haven't things changed in the past year!

This year..... Guess where I am.

That's right.... I'm at number 3! I'm even beating Oprah's love quotes. Again I seem to be torturing lovers everywhere, and deflating their libido with my post-repair angst. 

In the last 24 hours my Groma was almost about to be pipped by my Valentine for popularity. 

Well.... I can't be deflating their libido that much. There has been a worrying trend in the search terms that have brought readers other than the typosphere members to my blog. Here's a little screen grab:

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a very open minded man, and I like to think I'm rather worldly. Heck, I'm all for trying something at least once. Well, mostly... I'll have to rule out keychopping.

But.... what the ****.... is 'Platen Sex'? 

This is a serious entry. I see this in my search terms surprisingly frequently, so naturally I googled it myself and braced for the potential risk of seeing people doing things with platens that may be pretty much illegal in almost all American states. 

Oddly enough my blog about Ikea and their un-sexiness comes up as the second entry on google when you search for that term. But otherwise there's pretty much nothing to tell me what on earth 'platen sex' is. 

I have a theory. And the theory is that certain pepped up and excited men have been trying to google 'planet sex', but have been so jittery with enthusiasm, or so illiterate that they have mis-spelled it with comical and unfortunate results. 

Either way, like the lovelorn that unfortunately have become trapped in the pitfall that is my blog when they've been looking for something else, welcome! If you're going to put your feet up on the furniture, please take your shoes off first. And for those of you who are thinking of making yourselves a little too comfortable... keep your damn pants on. 

The 'Not a Valentine' - Sottsass's Olivetti leather and steel bad girl.

Sottsass referred to his Valentine typewriter as a 'too obvious tart'. And looking at the design, it is easy to see why. Inserting the typewriter into its case is described as a 'woman sliding into her stockings', while the design of the machine itself clearly displays a set of exposed - to paraphrase Richard Polt, 'Areolae'. Which is exactly what they were meant to be.

They certainly weren't meant to be eggs.

A photo of my Valentine, which I used in my blog earlier this year. 

The design is intensely sexual with it's bold cues and hot red tone. It is unquestionably passionate in an era when much of the world was coming to grips with the rapidly changing state of sexual politics and attitudes. 

But I doubt someone would describe the design as 'sensual'. It was boxy, smooth and sleek - but the design is bold, flirtatious and attention seeking while lacking any real intimacy. These aren't shy machines, secluded wall-flowers that look for a quiet life. 

Sottsass's approach was consistently lacking in subtlety, and his designs called out at you with lurid intensity more than any other consumer product of the era that wasn't sold in stores that had blacked out windows. He just didn't do sensual.

However the Valentine wasn't the only design that exploded with such sexual boldness. While the Valentine has more unique design points (some may suggest novelty design points) than other typewriters, Sottsass had a hand in another design that harked back to the era of the pin-up queen Bettie Page, and the mail-order photographs of her that were filled with leather, rope and steel. 

I speak of - the Olivetti Lettera DL. Also known as the Lettera 33.

Boldly dressed in leather, the DL is skirted by faux metal caging that locks around the shape. It flirts with a little red Tab button, but the design of this typewriter is razor sharp, and unforgiving. This is a typewriter that is fast, bold and not the kind of machine you take home to your mother. 

The case itself continues the metal look. It is the same shape and the design as the Lettera 32 typewriter's case, but is toned to a dull steel that is bound in black leather that holds the whole look together. 

The design across the front holds a leather brow across the top of the keyboard as though it is Bettie Page's famous bangs framing the keys, which are locked into a trance with the writer. 

But it is a playful machine. It is a dress-up of the more respectable day-job dressed Olivetti Lettera 32. While the L32 is the machine that dons the sensible shoes and tries to fit in with its environment, the DL/33 is an animal that is looking for a night of action and adventure, that didn't want to just sit at home watching television. 

This is undoubtably the bad-girl that is the counterpoint to Sotsass's 'Too obvious tart'. 

From a writer's point of view, this machine is better balanced than the Valentine and is much more comfortable to write on for lengthy periods. The plastic pleather coated shell is quieter than the tinny L32, and resonates sound from the type bars quite differently. Acoustically, it compares favourably against the Valentine too. 

In my opinion this is a superior machine to the Valentine, and to be honest much better suited to me as a writer. I feel a lot more at home with this machine than I do with the Valentine, and I certainly like it a lot more than the L32 that it is based on. I guess with all that leather and faux-steel I feel the love for it as a motorcyclist. 

It took me a while to get hold of this machine. I eventually stumbled across one on the Gold Coast earlier this year. After a bit of a cleanup, it was right to go, and I have used it several times since. 

While it doesn't have the attention seeking novelty features of the Valentine, I find this design of Sottsass to be far more appealing. And I want to play. Oh do I want to play with this machine. 

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Well Ton, Rob and Nick, guess what.....

In the past few days both Nick and Ton  have picked up Olivetti Valentine machines of their own. 

Here's Nick's blog on his purchase, which had followed Ton's which can be found here. 

*EDIT* Rob Messenger just pointed out that he also picked up a Valentine last week. They're multiplying! You can read about Robert's HERE

I was looking through Gumtree when I noticed a blurry photo of an Olivetti Valentine, at a price that was quite below $100. That's right BELOW $100. Maybe not the $15 typewriter that Nick got, but it was cheaper than most machines I had seen by more than half. However the photo wasn't all that great, and it was difficult to figure out what the condition of the machine was in, so I just forgot about it for a second. 

A split second. Then I sent the guy a message. 

Now, most of you may remember that I have had a very strained relationship with an Olivetti Valentine that is already in my collection. A machine that I eventually managed to return to operational condition, before it almost sent my fragile mental state into decline. 

So I drove over to Scarborough and had a look. I gave the typewriter a run on the seller's kitchen bench, and I was surprised by how nicely the machine ran. It had clearly been maintained - even though it was now full of dust, dirt and... a few scraps of paper. 

The storage case was in excellent condition, despite there being 'shed debris' smeared onto the crinkles of the plastic. But it wasn't scratched or cracked, and the rubber catches were still in perfect order. 

So, I threw down a handful of dollars and the typewriter was soon in my possession. 

I got it home and quickly scrubbed the fmuck out of the case and the back shell of the typewriter, and just put it on the kitchen table to get a few happy snaps of it. The red is such an endearing colour, and Ms Jane noticed it as I carried it past her. "Oh, that's a pretty red"! 

I'll probably do some better photos in the future for my blog and database, but these will do for now. 

I decided that when I bought it, that I could probably service it an re-sell it for a good deal more than I bought it for. But I'm not sure I want to sell this one now. A friend of mine was wanting my other Valentine some time back, and I may pass that one onto him. Or just sell it. It has a bit of a crack in its storage case which I can probably fuse back secure, although it probably doesn't need it. The condition that it is in, it would sell anyway as I have spent a fair bit of time nursing it back to full health. 

But two Valentines? 

I feel like I have started a Harem. Two Valentines. If I just started talking about 'my two valentines' with the nurses at work, they'd probably think that I have suddenly become a man of ill reputation. 

The guy that I bought the Valentine off had owned it since new. However he didn't have the manual for the machine, and for that I was a little sad. 

He bought it in 1971, and had shared it with his now ex wife for years. However, when they bought themselves a computer eventually, and as such the typewriter ended up being shoved into storage for quite some time. 

And now, I'm its second owner. 

As I was leaving, I asked him what prompted him to buy this typewriter originally. It turns out that he was working in the printing industry at the time, and wanted something specifically that had very stylish and different design. He was a very chatty chap, so I'd dare say that he worked in sales. 

So there we have it. I'm feeling the Valentine love tonight. 

And you know what? Despite the lack of a decent ribbon in this machine, It types actually quite nicely. I guess that's what you get when you find a machine that isn't a total basket-case from the go. I'd prefer it over my Lettera 32 to be honest. 

It reminds me of when I first started talking to the typosphere and Cameron over at Living in the woods, and he told me about his two machines. 'Two Valentines" I questioned. "Why"! But as it turned out, I have ended up in the same situation. 

Anyway, just because I know someone is bound to ask: 

Valentine (purchased by me in 2012) - 6863850  

Valentine (purchased by me in 2013) - 5526842

Anyway, may as well let my original Valentine finish off this blog post. 

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The seductive allure of my Valentine.

Pardon my miss-use of 'your' below :-

 

It may seem twee to be writing about my Valentine typewriter on Valentine's day, but then again my disdain for my Valentine has been rather well documented.  

So it may surprise a few people that I revisited the Valentine, which hiding at the back of my collection, and found myself being both frustrated, and then seduced by this machine. 

*  *  *

It all started late last year on Facebook. Or more accurately, with a friend from my past. 

This friend had been seeking me out on Facebook, but I wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with them. With a click of the block button they were gone - out of my life, and I expected them to be out of my mind forever.

But they weren't out of my mind. The situation bugged me for days, and after a little while I decided that it was time to write to them, and express my frustrations and hurt and ask them not try to contact me again.

So, I rolled out my Valentine. I had mixed feelings of anger and sadness, and the Valentine seemed to be the right keyboard to take it out on. Before long I had paper loaded into the machine, and I was bashing out a note to my now rather ex friend.

The Valentine however, didn't survive the length of the letter. Its scratchy carriage continued to grind and moan at every press of the key, and the escapement occasionally jammed and condensed letters together to form a blob of words. 

By the second page, the machine gave up the ghost. One of the bearings that I had painfully re-inserted 6 months ago shot out of the carriage unexpectedly mid travel. But I continued to type on the machine with the carriage wobbling around in a rickety motion until the letter was done.

I finished the letter and pushed it into an envelope. The next day I grabbed all of my outgoing mail, and headed to my nearest Australia Post mailbox. But before I did, I left the letter typed on the Valentine behind on my desk.

I was now left with a wounded Valentine. After I'd previously re-assembled the carriage I had never been happy with the action of the machine, and I just had a feeling that it wasn't trustworthy and that feeling proved to be right. 

I mulled over the mechanism and I couldn't quite figure out what had happened. It seemed physically impossible for the machine to dump a bearing mid movement, and I couldn't see any signs to tell me what had actually happened. The best I could figure out was that bearings may have been worn down, or that the retainer had jammed in the middle of the movement - forcing the bearings to jam and push out the side of the retainer and shoot out of the typewriter.

Obviously this was going to need the bearings to be once again re-inserted. But I just didn't have the heart to do it again, so I tucked the Valentine back into my cupboard until I had the patience and the mindset to do so. 

*  *  *

A somewhat casual auction. Much more relaxed than ebay.

 In January I flicked through a catalog  for an antiques auction over in Woolloongabba and spotted an interesting Art Deco table that had been poorly photographed, but showed some real potential. I popped down on the day of the auction, and discovered quite a beautiful table. 

While the auction progressed I picked through the bits in the store-room for a couple of hours until the table come up for auction. I bid - and won - a stunning 1930's dining table for a whopping $30. It would have been $20, but a dealer put in a half-arsed $5 bid against my first bid, just to see if he could score it cheap. I'd budgeted for significantly more than $30 for this table, which was pretty obvious to the dealer after I countered his bid within seconds, and he dropped out out of the running as he wasn't really interested.

Furniture wasn't really selling that day, and most of the dealers that were there were looking for little things that could be sold at markets or along with other items in their stock. Oddly several sets of antique bottle openers sold for more than the table did. Jewelery seemed to be the hot item, while my table was the only table to sell for the day.

While I was digging around the storage room, I discovered an Olivetti Dora buried in a job lot. The machine worked brilliantly, but was in a horrible state. The case was water-damaged, and some of the plastic had fused to the plastic of the Dora's Shell - staining it yellow and making it appear as though it had been burned. Also along with the typewriter in the job-lot was a marvelous label maker.

I bid, and before long I was the excited owner of a Dora and a label maker with about 20 fresh rolls of tape for a bank-breaking $10.

I grabbed that, and a few other trinkets that I'd bought, loaded up Ruby the Exxy and headed for home. 

*   *   *

 When I bought the Dora, I have other ideas than adding it to my collection. I could have spent hours fruitlessly trying to do something to the shell of the Dora to make it look nice again, or.... I could just use it as a parts machine. When I got it home and typed on it a little I was surprised by how well it worked. It was actually quite a nice typewriter. So I reconsidered my course of action for a moment, but then just through to myself - 'the world isn't going to miss one ugly Dora', and I promptly started to deconstruct the machine's shell. 

From a mechanical point of view, this Dora was pretty good. However, it had been filled with silt and muck - most likely from being stored in someone's leaky shed, and was most going to need a lot of cleaning. Frankly, I couldn't be bothered scrubbing the whole thing out. I flipped the machine over, and after dropping out no more than 8 bolts and two springs, I pushed some levers aside and I had the part I needed. 

 There can be only one! (swings sword).

I speak of course, of the entire carriage. Not just the rails, not just the platen, not just the paper table etc. But the entire array.

I spoke to John on the phone about what I was doing. Speaking from his experienced Olivetti typewriter mechanic point of view, his comment was blunt: "Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread".

John was right, of course. I had no idea of the complexities involved with relocating an entire carriage into a new machine. But I sure didn't have any intention of putting myself through the grief of relocating the bearings again - particularly as there was clearly something very wrong with them.

But the job turned out to be quite simple. I ripped the Valentine's carriage out, and plonked the Dora's back into place quite quickly. I even gave everything a scrub along with a grease and oil change while I was at it, so all the important bits were well looked after and running very smoothly. it all seemed to be such a simple repair. I flipped it over, and before shoving the shell back on, I gave it a test run.

Of course, nothing worked. 

Okay... so... where do I start fixing this.

So, I flipped the machine over gain and loosened the bolts, screws and bits and pieces. Progressively things sort of worked as I fiddled with them, but adjusting things in one direction seemed to put something else out. So soon it got to the point where it occurred to me that the entire carriage array must need some kind complicated adjustment procedure performed to ensure that everything lined up correctly.

After a little bit of thinking, I thought I had come up with an idea on how to do this complicated adjustment procedure. I flipped over the machine and loosened off the 6 bolts retaining the carriage array to the side, then pressed down hard on the carriage while re-tightening the bolts with retaining this compressed state.

Aaaaaaaaaaand......

The Valentine worked perfectly.

Well, except for a couple of things that I had 'adjusted' earlier, which I had to screw back to where they originally had been.

I quickly bolted everything back together, chucked in the new ribbon that I had been using previously in the machine (I use a mostly dry ribbon while testing repairs) and give it a bit of a burl.

And you know what? After being serviced, cleaned and adjusted to death, this carriage would have to be the smoothest moving carriage I have ever found on an Olivetti. And I mean... this was SMOOTH. The plastic shell of the case which reverberated bumps and grinds previously, was now astonishingly quiet. Only my Hermes 3000 machines are smoother and quieter.

This was an outcome that was completely unexpected. So I quickly pushed in a few fresh pages of letterhead paper, and turned out a couple of long overdue letters to a couple of members of the typosphere.


And you know what? I actually quite enjoyed my time with my Valentine. There's some aspects to this machine that are a bit unrefined, but largely I found this typewriter to be a very competent typewriter. It isn't the pinnacle of typewriter engineering, but it was a surprisingly comfortable, quiet and stylish machine to use.

I'm not in love. Oh no.

But this is one Valentine that I'd be happy to go a round with twice a day, and three times on Sunday. (my overseas readers may not quite catch onto what I'm saying there).

*   *   *

The letter that I typed before I repaired the machine still hasn't been posted. It sits in a box - maybe for life. I may find a moment to burn it and let go of the memories of a long passed toxic friendship. In the meantime, I've gained an appreciation for a beautiful Valentine.

P.S. I used the shift keys from the Dora - which were the more modern Lettera 32 square style, to replace the missing shift key. I also replaced the non missing shift key as well, so everything matched up.

Sex, Ikea and Typewriters.

To small to read? Click to enlarge.
Oh, and pardon the spelling monstrosities. What was I thinking!?

A hate letter to my Valentine.

Seem like strong words? 

It seemed such a simple thing - putting the bearings back into a typewriter carriage. I saw Retro-tech Geneva's Valentine shooting bearings, and I felt pretty confident that this was a problem that I could manage. 

And when I say manage, I mean... mange with a bit of effort. I wasn't expecting this to be a walk in the park. 

The day after I read about the bearing shooting typer, I came across one on Ebay Australia that was doing the same thing. It had a few dings and issues, and no one else on Ebay wanted to go near the thing. So it was going pretty cheaply. The man who owned it had attempted to repair it too, but had only gotten as far as Retro-tech had. After the sale was completed, he asked me to keep him informed as to how my repairs went. 

The Valentine doesn't suit my collection, but the style and design are just so - iconic - that I felt that it would be nice to have one there. If anything, just as a poser piece. 

But that was the theory. In practice, I really don't like hanging onto a typewriter that I am not actually going to use. So, I set about repairing this typewriter. I had a heap of time on my hands today while I waited for my car to be serviced, so I thought I'd spend some quality time with this machine. 

But I was too eager. I sat down and watched a movie last night, and found myself felling far from tired. I thought to myself 'Just make a start', and before long I had the Valentine partially disassembled on my desk. 

The hours passed by quickly, and I soon found myself filling my glasses with perspiration. Nothing was working. Nothing seemed to work logically. By about 11pm I found myself very tired. My patience was failing, my sanity was slipping, and I knew I wouldn't achieve anything this evening. 

I put out a plea to the portable typewriter forum for help. I was so tired that I asked for help with an Olivetti Lettera 32 (I'm not even sure I wrote the whole thing) instead of a Valentine.

I ended up laying in bed with my iPad. I read through Retro-tech's site and comments, and I came across a link to an older blog entry by another typosphere blogger on this subject. I clicked on the link and read through the bloggers suggestions (in his case, an actual lettera 32 was being used) but I just couldn't understand them. Nothing seemed to make sense as I was too tried. 

I put the iPad down, and ran through some thoughts about the Valentine problem. But I was lucid, and I started to think about how much of a complete wast of time it was. My mind I crossed between waking and dreaming, and I soon found myself being teased by a young girl about how 'boring' this all was, and how I just apparently didn't know what fun was. She giggled, and played 'Girls just wanna have fun' on a record player in her pink bedroom. 

I awoke a little later, but I couldn't accept at the time I had been dreaming. It didn't make sense, but it had to have come from somewhere, right? 

I crawled this morning with a heck of a headache. I spilled my tea everywhere, and made a mess of just about everything. I took my car to the service centre, and then walked home. My head felt dull, and I just couldn't think. I decided I just didn't have the mental capacity to deal with the Valentine, so I busted open my coin box and counted it.

$250? Not bad.... Now... how do I deposit all this coin when there's not a single branch of any bank still open near by? 

After I while I re-read the blog site. I could picture what they were saying in my head, but I wasn't sure it would work. But I gave it a try. I slipped one side of the bearing retainer into the carriage without a problem, and then tried putting the other in. The site suggested that I 'shimmy' the second side in. 

I tried and I tried. And nothing seemed to work. After about 30 minutes of trying to 'shimmy' I more or less gave up. 

As I lowered the carriage gently back into its bed something happened. The retainer slipped... every so slightly. It slid between the rails, and past where it had previously been blocked. 

I stopped and drew a breath. This was progress... REAL progress. It may only be about a millimetre, but it showed it could get in there. The bloggers suggestions really could work! 

And work they did. Before long I had slid the entire retainer tightly in between the rails, popped a couple of bearings in as instructed, and began to slide the carriage. Things were looking good! 

The bearings popped out again, but this was expected. I slotted all 4 in this time, slid the carriage back onto the rails and locked the carriage. I reassembled everything and.... It all seemed to be working. At least until I shot out one of the bearings again when I slid the carriage back to inspect the operation. 

Not a problem. The rear retainer was about a mm out of line with the front retainer, and this caused it to poke just a tiny bit out the side. I shimmied it back a bit, and it all lined up nicely. *Note to anyone else attempting this. You have to be dead accurate with your positioning*. 

I bolted everything back together, let out a deep breath, and just looked at my handiwork. I had done it. I had reassembled the Valentine. I had a Valentine that worked! Now, it was time for a ribbon. 

After the fight with the carriage, what came next just felt like a cruel joke. Slotting the ribbon into the Valentine is anything but graceful. It wasn't enough that lining up the ribbon into the unit was far more awkward than seemed logically possible, but the spool caps refused to screw on. This turned out to be largely the fault of the spools I had been using. But not entirely their fault. I quickly swapped over to another ribbon I had that had universal spools with a lot of clearance around the centre hole opening. 

The caps screwed on, but I still needed to hold down the spool with some pressure to stop the centre shaft from spinning while I tightened the caps. The whole thing was clearly designed to allow for maximum use of space available, instead of considering the needs of the poor typist that would be using this machine. 

I cleared off the ink I had smeared all over the typewriter and fed some paper in. The repair was done, and with all the frustration and anger that I still had coursing in my veins from the repair, I tapped out the above letter to my Valentine typewriter. It was the first time I ever typed on a Valentine, and I have to say, I'm far from impressed. But at least that... was something that I expected. 

It even skipped the escapement while I tried to type 'fragmenter', driving home how much effort I put into something that really wasn't worth the time.

And to you, Mr Typebarhead.... Your instructions saved the day. They need a but of tweaking, but for the most part your directions are excellent. If you ever are in Brisbane, sir... I owe you a beer.