Opening day of baseball is coming. ⚾ I’m finishing the adjustments and final coats of polish to my 1957 Royal FP standard typewriter in Dodger Blue. It was manufactured the same year that the Brooklyn Dodgers announced their move to Los Angeles, so it will be a fantastic machine to score the 68th Los Angeles home opener on March 26th.
The first session will be on Saturday, March 14, 2026, and will recur weekly from 8:00 AM – 10:00 Pacific. Our meetings are welcoming and casual conversations over Zoom with the optional beverage of your choice. We’ll cover chapters 1-4 in Part I in the first meeting.
To join and get access to the Zoom links and the shared Obsidian vault we use for notes and community communication, ping Dan Allosso with your email address.
Noo-nee-noo-nee-noo…Typewriter Guy is rolling in as a ReAction Figure! Inspired by the animated character from Sesame Street, this articulated collectible is 2.5” tall with rolling wheels! This action figure takes the shape of the original television character, with colorful typewriter keys, a blank piece of paper, expressive eyes, and elongated arms with hands poised to bring new words to life. The Typewriter Guy ReAction Figure comes in blister card-back packaging with Super7 artwork influenced by the original children’s television series. Clickety-clack, tap, tap, tap—and hurry to bring this inventive character home to your collection.
This is coming out next week on the 11th, and totally unrelated: my birthday is coming up…
Over the weekend I stripped down my 1956 Olympia SG1 and cleaned all the body panels thoroughly. I had taken out all the old foam, but I also removed the remaining loosened felt pieces.
I flushed the internals out with lacquer thinner and blew everything out with the air compressor the following day. I replaced the rubber body bushings and replaced two missing washers on the feet. Then I put everything back together making the appropriate adjustments as I went.
Remaining servicing
Sometime in the near future I still need to replace the feet (they’re reasonably passable), the platen (rock hard), and the felt/foam. I’ll polish up the keys, chrome, and brights. I still need to polish up the keylevers and typebars which I decided not to remove and put through an ultrasonic cleaner.
It still needs a replacement set screw for the tab clear lever on the right hand side. I’ll also eventually need to replace the underlying metal connection on the right hand side card guide—it’s missing the connecting pin and part of the left metal arm. I’ve remediated most of the minimal rust, but there are a few remaining internal blemishes that could be polished up (low priority). I’ll also need to weld back on the curved, flat “spring” on the left end of the bottom of the paper table that shore itself off at some point. The tabulator can also use a bit of additional love and attention.
For historical purposes, I left the tiniest hint of “brown nicotine stain” on the right side of the carriage where a smoker apparently kept their ash tray. That side of the machine almost appeared to be a chimney based on the discoloration which was otherwise remediated.
Beyond this, it’s ready to be in the regular rotation, but will be my primary desk machine for the near future.
Over the weekend I made a major push on beginning restoration of the Olympia SG1 standard typewriter I picked up this past month.
One of the small issues I encountered was finding four crushed rubber bushings between the exterior typewriter shell and the main chassis at the four corners on the bottom of the machine.
This black rubber bushing is so smashed you almost can’t see it above the silver screw head at the bottom of the typewriter frame. The typewriter’s foot has been removed from the vacant screw hole just to the left of the bushing screw to provide better visibility.
This is a common repair issue for the Olympia SM3 machines and one which can dramatically impair that typewriter’s functionality after several decades. I expected this would be a common enough problem, so I searched a few fora, YouTube, and some specialty Facebook Groups to see how others had done the replacement and find the specs for the original part. Sadly none were forthcoming. Has no one written this up before? Perhaps because the issue isn’t a huge problem from a functional perspective, no one has bothered?
But when you’re doing a thorough restoration on a machine you plan to put into daily use, you go the extra mile. To that end, I thought I’d write up a few notes for those who encounter this in the future, particularly as I couldn’t find quick sources on it the way one can for the SM3.
My crushed rubber husks (now more like a brittle, friable plastic) were approximately 16mmOD x 4mm ID x 2 mm, but I wanted to do better than guessing the appropriate replacement. Fortunately our friend Richard Polt has a downloadable .pdf copy of the Olympia Spare Parts Catalog and Price List for Standard Typewriters Model SG1 (Jan. 1, 1961 edition) from the Ames Supply Company on his website. Pulling it up very quickly provided a diagram of the appropriate part on page 12 and indicated it to be part number 34280-5x.6. Scrolling ahead to page 61, one discovers that the part is called a “spacing washer (rubber)” whose original specs are listed as 5⌀12⌀x4mm which originally listed for 11¢. On a German manufactured machine this is indicating a 5mm inner diameter, 12 mm outer diameter, and thickness of 4mm.
A quick spin over to the local Ace Hardware store and I was able to find a variety of Hillman rubber bushings on offer as potential replacements.
I selected Hillman part number 405784-E as the closest bushing with dimensions 1/4″ overall length; 3/16″ ID, 9/16″ major dia.; 3/8″ min. dia. and 1/8″ Hd. thickness. I picked up 4 of them for $0.95 each. Depending on availability, others might find luck ordering something of similar size and dimension from purveyors like McMaster-Carr or Grainger.
The old (left) and the new (right).
Back at home I inserted the smaller end into the hole of the frame and screwed the shoulder bolt and washer back in to hold the frame onto the typewriter chassis. It seemed an excellent fit and this part of the machine should be in good shape for the next few decades.
If this is the only repair you’re making to your machine, I suggest you replace each one, one-at-a-time in turn. This will prevent you from needing to take apart more of the machine or removing the entire body shell to get them on and will speed up the replacement process. If you’re doing it as a larger restoration, then just install them when you re-attach the body shell. For me, loosely attaching the two rear ones followed by the two at the front and then tightening/adjusting them all seemed to be the easier way to go.
If you’re restoring your own SG1, I hope these details make your work and research a bit quicker and easier.
Joe Van Cleave from Youtube
