Sunday, December 20, 2009
I spent quite a few free hours this week cleaning up my old Underwood Number 5, which badly needed to be scrubbed, vacuumed and polished. Today I updated the web page for it with some new photos and typewriter-lovin' nerd talk. Click on the photo to see more.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Found at today's estate auction, this French-made typewriter with Cyrillic keys. My Aunt Susan spotted it before I did and tipped me off about an "old typewriter" on one of the display tables. When I caught sight of it from a distance I wasn't too impressed because of its extremely worn appearance, but when I noticed it had a Cyrillic keyboard I just about wet myself.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Today's typecast:
Monday, July 13, 2009
I just had to sneak Tim’s new Smith-Corona Skyriter out of his room while he was away at a friend’s house to have a look inside it. And a good thing I did, too, because the piece of felt that’s meant to cradle the keys and keep them from clacking as they fall back away from the platen into the typewriter had peeled away, allowing the keys to noisily clatter against the metal underneath. A few drops of judiciously applied hot glue fixed the felt back in place, and now his Skyriter makes only a quiet tick-tick-tick as it’s working.
Tim wanted a little portable after falling in love with my Remette. He even found a Remette up for action on e-bay but didn’t win it. He wanted something right away, though, and that’s when the Skyriter caught his eye. He bought it immediately and it came in the mail today.
It’s a very trim little machine, scarcely two inches high, and I’ll bet it doesn’t way more than two pounds. It’s made almost entirely out of stamped metal, probably aluminium, and it’s in good working order. Key action seems a little stiff, and the short travel of the keys would take some getting used to, but it would be a great traveling companion.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the fun I had one afternoon during our vacation at the cottage when Jack came onto the front porch while I was writing down a few thoughts on my Smith-Corona portable. He was fascinated by the machine. “It’s just like a computer, but without a screen,” he marvelled. “I didn’t even know such a thing existed!”
“Would you like to try it?” I asked, knowing full well that he was dying to take it for a spin. He jumped right up and began banging out words, then sentences. After I showed him how it worked, we began to play a game: I would type a question on the paper, and he would type an answer. After a few questions, he made me leave the porch and wait inside while he typed the answer; then, he would come in and make me go out to the porch to type another question while he waited inside for me to finish. We spent most of an afternoon playing like that.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tonight, the carriage of this old Smith-Corona moved under its own power again for the first time in many moons. The belt that connects the carriage to a spring-loaded drum to pull it along as the keys are struck was broken when I rescued this machine from the thrift store. I was going to hunt around Hobby Lobby looking for a suitable piece of webbing, but yesterday while I was walking past Jack’s shoe store on State Street I realized that I had a ready supply of belts much closer at hand, ducked in and perused their selection of shoe laces. Sure enough, they had one that was flat and just wide enough to do the job. I pocketed them in exchange for two-fifty, dropped them on the work bench when I got home and tonight I put it in place.
Which wasn’t easy. The little metal doohickies on each end of the belt weren’t mean to be re-used. I had to very carefully prise open the bent-over metal ears that clamped tight around the old, broken belt as slowly as my patience would allow. If I had broken them I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea where to get replacement parts, short of finding another broken-down Smith-Corona to use as an organ donor. But they didn’t break; I was able to free them from the broken belt, then very carefully crimp the metal ears tight around either end of the shoelace, which I had cut to fit.
The shoelaces worked swimmingly. As I rapped out a couple choruses of Quick Brown Fox the carriage joined right in, a bit tentatively at first, then getting into the rhythm of the beat. I could be typing on this beautiful old machine before the end of summer.
And now, today’s typecast, typed early this morning before dressing for work:
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Another Saturday, another typewriter rescued from the back room of Saint Vincent de Paul’s thrift store. This one, a Remington that is very probably a Quiet-Riter (the cover over the margin settings is missing, which appears to be the only part of the machine on which the Remington Rand company emblazoned the name on this particular model), is in perfect working order and as soon as I rapped out a few lines of Quick Brown Fox and felt the silky smoothness of its mechanism I knew I had to take it home. Its innards were cleaner than most new machines, and its outer shell would need only a bit of elbow grease to remove the dirty patches here and there. At twenty dollars, it was a steal.
Tim liked it so much he offered to buy it from me the moment he set eyes on it. I had to tell him no. He drives past Saint Vinnie’s every day and could easily stop in to look for a typewriter of his own. They have one on display almost every weekend; who knows what I’ve been missing by stopping there only on Saturdays.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
I spent a cozy afternoon trying to figure out how to disassemble the carriage of the L.C. Smith-Corona No. 8 ... well, not so much figuring out how to get it apart, as much as trying to figure how I’m going to get it back together again.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
There’s a shine under all that grunge! Ten minutes of vigorous rubbing with a damp cotton cloth removed most of the grody build-up of scum along the left wing of the paper guide. A few more nights of steady scrubbing and the rest of the piece will look like its been spit-shined, although first I’ll have to answer the question: How do I clean around the decals without rubbing them off?
Monday, June 15, 2009
A mystery: This bit of bare metal was taped to the inside surface of a side panel of an L.C. Smith & Corona No. 8. Another piece, about six inches long and about three-quarters of an inch wide, with a shallow V cut into the top side in the middle, was taped to the inside of the front panel. What could it be for? Spare parts?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
I had not bought an old typewriter in years, mostly because I collect too many things already and the basement was getting full, but when I saw this nearly-intact Smith-Corona sitting on the counter at a Saint Vincent de Paul’s thrift shop yesterday I couldn’t leave it to be pecked to pieces by every passing boy that was roaming the aisles, bored out of his mind and looking for something to occupy his time while his mom combed through the tea saucers for antiques that might have been overlooked by the dealers, as if that ever happens.
I appeared to be a little run-down, but a closer inspection revealed that it was almost entirely intact. I found just one linkage missing between a tab key and the actuator. The carriage wouldn’t advance when I struck a key, the result of a broken web belt. And a triangular piece was missing from the right rear corner of the iron frame, probably the result of being dropped by whoever brought the typewriter to Saint Vincent’s; it was a very recent-looking break. Too bad, because it was in otherwise very good condition.
They were asking thirty-five dollars for it, probably a steal for such a well-preserved typewriter but I felt a little self-conscious about spending so much money on something I didn’t need. I knew if I walked away from it, though, I’d kick myself for weeks, so when My Darling B arrived I mustered up all my courage to whisper sheepisly in her ear, “They have an old typewriter I’d like to buy.”
“Really? Where is it?” she asked, so I took her to see it. She didn’t Oooo and Ahhh over it the way I had, but she did allow as to how it was in pretty good shape before giving it the nod, saying, “Sure, go ahead. You deserve it.” That’s why I love this woman; I’ve got a half-dozen old typewriters in the basement, and she encourages me to buy more.
© 2009 Dave Okonski
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