When I received this machine it was in mediocre shape at best. The $21 I spent on it was pretty indicative of it’s value. Somewhere along the way the paper table had taken a hit and been dented. I spent some time on forming it back up, and it’s in better shape than before, but could probably still use some more concerted and careful work with a rubber mallet. I was pleased to discover that the disconnected drawband wasn’t compounded with a broken mainspring. Royal made it pretty easy to re-tension the mainspring with their screw assembly in the left rear corner.
There are a small handful of small remaining issues that I’ll take care of fairly quickly in the coming weeks including:
I’m sure to find at least one other subtle, but niggling issue as I put this lovely machine into my regular rotation of typewriters. I’m thrilled to have an elite typeface version of the KMG to pair with my pica typeface version.
The grinding/sticking I was originally getting mid-carriage was due to a piece of the right carriage cover being bent back and over itself. Removing it and forming it back remedied the situation fairly quickly. I cleaned and treated the rear body panels which show signs of rust developing underneath the paint. (Rust on other portions of the machine indicate it was kept in a less-than-ideal location for years.)
Just as I was nearing completion, the draw band managed to slip off its mount and the mainspring’s unwinding broke the draw band at the metal attachment to the carriage. It took a while to remove the old material, form the cleat open, reseat the draw band and then close it back up. Fortunately re-tensioning the mainspring was pretty simple and straightforward.
The platen action is now so smooth that with the variable lever in the open position, the entire platen will spin freely in a way I’ve never seen a typewriter manage before. Sadly it shows that the right platen knob has a small eccentricity, though it’s so minor I think I’ll leave it alone for now.
In cleaning it, I also noticed that the carriage return arm apparently used to be chromed, but it was done so badly it’s all been peeled off at this point. As a result, the return arm has a galvanized appearance which isn’t ideal. I’ll have to consider some options to improve it in the future.
The toughest part of the operation was the insane amount of degreaser (acetone tonight) it took to clean off the margin rail to get the margin sets to work properly. I have a feeling that someone managed to get Scotch tape stuck up underneath the left margin set, and it took 20 minutes to flush it all out. Now they’re as smooth as butter. I really appreciate the easy-to-use form factor of these margin sets.
Surely there will be a few subtle adjustments I’ll continue to make as I use it over the coming days and put it thought its paces, but it’s definitely ready for prime time use now.
While it functions much better now, its action isn’t nearly as fast as some of my other standards. Somehow it manages to be more ponderous, though some of it may be the tremendous size of the 6 CPI typeface. Maybe increasing the tension on the mainspring will help out here, particularly with the oversized platen.
While I love having a larger face typewriter, I can already tell that I’m likely not going to be using this one as frequently as I do my elite and pica machines with more traditional typeface sizes. It sure is fun using it though. I can tell it’ll be a hit at the next local type-in.
I’m including some revised photos of it to compare with the previous “before” photos.
True Wednesdaycore: Even Wednesday Addams is checking out my Corona flat top! Hey Thing! Wanna come over and type with me?
The metal bar often with either grooves or embossed with white lines or in later century models the clear plastic Perspex card guides often with pre-printed white or red lines and/or hash marks on either side of the a typing point are called the line indicator. The “line” it suggests is the potential or actual line of type across the page and is often called the typing line. If it’s properly adjusted it should be set to the base line of the characters you’re typing and also fit the characters either between them or point at the center of the characters. This way if you remove a page and then need to type on it again, you can very precisely level and align the typing line and the characters themselves so that no one will know the page was typed in one or multiple passes. It’s also useful if you accidentally use the permanent variable in the platen and shift the regularity of your lines, then you can properly re-align them and continue typing.
Careful use of the line indicator and the character spacing hash marks also allows one to very precisely align pre-printed forms for filling in data either on blank lines or within pre-printed boxes. As an example, you can find a well-aligned version of a baseball scorecard I typed back in March. It relies on using the correct pitch typewriter and aligning the home plate in the top center of the scorecard carefully designed by Lou Spirito. If you compare them, my alignment is more careful than Tom Hanks’ “this is maybe close enough” alignment, which can show how useful the line indicator can be for professional looking typed documents.
The character spacing on the line indicator rule can allow one to also guestimate where they need to either end a word or hyphenate it when they hear the bell at the end of the line. Later machines often had 5-10 spaces on their line indicators to allow just this sort of guestimate as this was often the number of spaces available before hitting the right margin after the bell.
On some models, the line indicator may have a V-shaped groove or small hole cut into it just below the top of the typing line. This is meant to allow the operator to insert a pencil or pen into that space and then using the carriage release to draw a straight horizontal line across the page. Doing the same thing, but with the platen knobs will allow one to create vertical lines on their pages quickly.
On old typewriters with poor or hardened rubber on the platen and rollers, which can allow the paper to slip a bit, or be inserted at a slight angle or on typewriters which don’t have paper guides, one can also use the line indicator to ensure the paper is level when inserted.
As a subtle paper and type alignment hint, most pica and elite machines will lay down type at six lines per inch, so one can use this fact along with the line setting of the carriage return to align the start of their page on either the fourth or the seventh single spaced line to give the page either a 1/2 inch or 1 inch top margin respectively.
If you’re repairing or restoring a typewriter you generally want to properly register all the various typing rules on the machine so that they line up with each other. This can include rules on the back of the machine, the paper table, the front of the carriage, the line indicator, and the paper bail. Often one may be a permanent placement and not have adjustment capability in which case the others are aligned to it. Most of the rest of the rules will have oval screw holes which allow them to be shifted left/right to line them up and then screws to tighten them down. Alignment can be effectuated by putting a sheet of paper into the machine squarely and then using both edges of the paper to line up the same markings across all the rules.
The line indicator is one of the few rules that can also be adjusted up/down so that you can type out a line of HHHs or NNNs and adjust both sides so that you can level the line indicator to the baseline of the characters typed across the page to have everything level. It’s this careful alignment in the shop which will allow the professional typist to turn out the best quality material, particularly when it comes to typing out pre-printed forms.
Older machines, particularly ones with manually set tab stops in the back of the machine to allow for accurately setting tabs, will have one or more rules hiding on the back of the machine. Be sure to account for these and adjust them properly as well.
Be aware that on some machines the design might sometimes allow two rules to coincide. As an example, the line indicator rule and the carriage ruler on the Underwood Touch Master 5 are the same rule.
Hopefully now that you know about the subtle art of the line indicator and how it’s used, you’ll be able to better adjust your own typewriter and turn out more sophisticated looking pages.
Dr. Miller has now listed his mathematics offering for Fall 2025 at UCLA Extension. It’s Introduction to Hilbert Spaces: An Adventure In Infinite Dimensions (MATH 900). As always, it will be presented in lectures on Tuesday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM with a short break in the middle. The class runs from September 23 – December 9 and is a screaming deal at just $450.00.
As many know, Dr. Miller does a superb job presenting advanced and abstract mathematics to the point that most students who take one or two classes return for decades. If you’re a fan of math and physics and have wanted to delve beneath the surface, this is an excellent opportunity to not only begin, but to meet lots of others who share your interests. For newcomers interested in taking a peek, I’ve written up a short introduction to his teaching style with some hints and tips based on my 18 years of taking coursework with him in his 52 year teaching career. There’s definitely a reason dozens of us keep showing up.
Here’s the description in the course catalog:
This course is designed for scientists, engineers, mathematics teachers, and devotees of mathematical reasoning who wish to gain a better understanding of a critical mathematical discipline with applications to fields as diverse as quantum physics and psychology.
A Hilbert space is a vector space that is endowed with an inner product for which the corresponding metric is complete (i.e., every Cauchy sequence converges). Examples include finite-dimensional Euclidean spaces; the space l2 of all infinite sequences (a1, a2, a3, …) of complex numbers, the sum of whose squared moduli converges; and the space L2 of all square-summable functions on an interval. This introductory, yet rigorous, treatment focuses initially on the structure (orthogonality, orthonormal bases, linear operators, Bessel’s inequality, etc.) of general Hilbert spaces, with the latter part of the course devoted to interpreting these constructs in the context of Legendre polynomials, Fourier series, Sobolev spaces, and other prominent mathematical structures.
The listed prerequisites for the course are calculus and linear algebra, though Dr. Miller generally does an excellent job of bringing up students without a huge machinery of mathematics background or sophistication up to speed to appreciate the material. Whatever you do, don’t let the technical nature of the description deter you from jumping into abstract mathematics with both feet.
The UCLA Bookstore currently doesn’t have a suggested textbook for the course listed. Dr. Miller doesn’t require a textbook, but will often suggest one in addition to the incredibly comprehensive notes he provides in his lectures for understanding the subject. For the curious and the less-experienced or budding mathematicians out there, his lecture notes are clearer and imminently more understandable than any book you’re likely to find on the subject.
For those curious in exploring the space, I’ve put together a short bibliography of some of the more common textbooks covering the undergraduate and graduate studies within the area. Dr. Miller is sure to choose one at the level of an advanced undergraduate (junior or senior level).
