Category: Photo

We were allowed back into our neighborhood over the weekend and were excited to find our poor wind battered and smoke damaged house still standing.

Naturally I brought back a daily typewriter, but it was eerie to see what I’d last typed on it two weeks ago just before we had to evacuate.

A Remington Standard typewriter sitting in the front seat of a car.

Typed index card that reads: 2025-01-07 Crazy winds kicked up this morning around 5:30AM and woke up both Sonia and I early. I went out briefly around 6:00 A to batten down the hatches and move the car out from under the tree. Evie was already up and working on her math homework. I'm really proud of her for this as well as going to bed at a reasonable time last night. The trip to school wasn't too bad this morning, though I did have to navigate around a Christmas thee that had blown into the middle of the street. Winds are supposed to be bad all day long. I'm sort of worried about going to class tonight at UCLA, but I suspect that winds there probably aren't as bad based on what Sonia has said about her drive into the office earlier

A dark wooden table with a thin cardboard and taped package on it. Sitting on top of it is a pair of blue handled scissors. Nearby in the background is a lazy susan with a plate and several small decorative pumpkins on it.

An opened corrugated cardboard package with a large almost 12 inch diameter reel of typewriter ribbon wrapped in a plastic bag. The reel sits next to two tiny 2 inch diameter plastic spools and a pair of scissors for scale. Behind the reel of ribbon is a green crinkle painted 1958 Olympia SM3 with green keys. The reel appears that it is even larger in base surface area than the typewriter is.

White index card in a green Olympia SM3 typewriter spooled up with a blue and green ribbon. Typed on the card in alternating colors of blue and green are the words: Blue & Green typewriter ribbon #FTW

Typewriter ribbon unboxing! I bought a full reel of 660 yards of blue/green bichrome 1/2″ nylon typewriter ribbon from Fine Line Ribbon in Ennis, TX. It arrived yesterday, just in time for some use over the weekend. I’ve now got enough for more than 41 universal 2″ diameter (16 yard) spools, so I should be able to ribbon up my entire collection and have some left over. 

A heavily ink smudged paper towel sitting on the keyboard of a green Olympia typewriter. Spooling a full reel of ribbon was obviously a very messy business as seen by the black, red, blue, and green smudging.
Latex gloves and a good rag are necessary when spooling up from a 660 yard reel of nylon ribbon.
I started the process of cleaning my green 1958 Olympia SM3 to bring it back up to speed. Things are generally moving apace although the mixture of eraser shavings and old oil has tarnished the carriage rails. Spent some time with some metal polish trying to bring them back to their old glory. Should be able to finish flushing out tomorrow and getting it back together and properly adjusted.

Here’s a bit of a time lapse of the work: