Restoration of another 1950 Royal KMG standard typewriter

On Thursday, I broke down my recent Royal KMG typewriter for a full clean/oil/adjust. I spent some time cleaning most of the removed body panels and auxiliary parts. Yesterday, in the cool of the morning I blew it out and flushed it with mineral spirits. Then re-assembled it all. I oiled and adjusted most of it back to as close to factory condition as I can without a full disassembly.

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:

the tab set is still a little rough and doesn’t have a consistent, strong return

the platen needs to be re-covered

the feet and rubber compression pads need replacement

the carriage return arm doesn’t have as consistent return as I’d like

the scale on the paper bail really ought to be reconditioned, but is in fairly average, workable shape for a 75 year old machine. I’m also not sure how I’d like to attack a reconditioning yet.

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.

Twins! 1950 Royal KMG standard typewriters with elite (left) and pica (right).