Tag: typewriter ribbon

Fine Line Ribbon for your Typewriter Ribbon Needs

I’ve yet to find a bulk dealer in typewriter ribbon that has a significant website with listings of their offerings and options. (Let’s hear it for analog!) Baco Ribbon certainly didn’t, so I called a few times and made some orders and pieced together most of what Baco Ribbon & Supply Co. offers. 

Fine Line Ribbon also has some excellent bulk offerings and an almost non-existent website. I thought I’d make a similar post with their current offerings so that those who have typewriter collections that go past 5 machines or who are scaffolding their way to opening typewriter repair shops might have an easier time of selecting and ordering the appropriate ribbon. 12-15 cents per yard of ribbon in bulk is so much better than paying almost a dollar per yard otherwise. It pays for itself pretty quickly. 

They offer ribbon in both nylon and silk in partial and full reels. (Sorry, no cotton ribbon offerings at the moment.)

Silk Typewriter Ribbon

For silk, Fine Line Ribbon only offers black/red or black ribbon color options at $0.33 per yard. A full reel of silk is 545 yards.

Nylon Typewriter Ribbon

For nylon, whose full reels are 660 yards, Fine Line Ribbon can ink in any of the following single color options or your choice of any two colors as a bichrome option:

  • Black
  • Blue
  • Brown
  • Green
  • Orange
  • Pink†
  • Purple
  • Red

They often have partial reels of most colors available. Black or Black/Red nylon is $0.12 per yard and other colors or color combinations are $0.15 per yard.

Contact information

Fine Line Ribbon, Inc.
Theresa Strunc

2405 N. Preston Street
Ennis, TX 75119 United States
theresa@finelineribbon.net
+1 (972) 875-8681
+1 (800) 527-0354

https://finelineribbon.net/

† At present, Fine Line Ribbon only offers pink as a standalone color and not as a bichrome option with other colors.

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.

Bulk Order of Typewriter Ribbon from Baco Ribbon & Supply Co.

Having surpassed the 10 typewriter mark in my collection, I felt it was time to invest in some more serious typewriter ribbon for the “fleet”. There are some purveyors charging in the range of $10-20 for typewriter ribbon (and yes! people do still sell and buy typewriter ribbon!)  I’m pretty sure by buying from closer to the source that I could drop the price down significantly and potentially save the money toward repairs, new platens, or even other machines. 

Naturally the first stop was Richard Polt’s site, where he lists a handful of purveyors. I’ve heard good things in general about Baco both from Richard and Joe Van Cleave as well as others in the past few months, so I took the plunge and ordered a full reel of 660 yards of nylon black/red typewriter ribbon for $65. It should keep all my machines inked for quite a while. 

Given that the typical standard/universal spool will accommodate 16 yards, this should be 41.25 spools. This also brings the price down to a far more economical $1.60 per spool versus the much higher level others are charging, particularly since I generally self-wind my own ribbon onto original metal spools and don’t need the additional plastic waste. It also has the added benefit of supporting the efforts of Charlene Oesch until she decides to retire. 

If you’re in the market, here are the basic details to call and place an order (she specifically doesn’t have and doesn’t want a website), but she’s definitely still in business, carrying on in the tradition of her father since at least 1949:

Baco Ribbon & Supply Co.
Charlene Oesch

1521 Carman Road
Ballwin, MO  63021 United States
bacoribbon@sbcglobal.net
+1 (314) 835-9300
+1 (536) 394-5475 (fax)

 

Baco takes both credit card and PayPal and ships within about a day via USPS in the United States. 

Current offerings/pricing (subject to change):

  • 660 yards (full reel) of nylon ribbon in black or black/red for $65
  • 330 yards (half reel) of nylon ribbon in black or black/red for $45
  • 550 yards of silk ribbon in black or black/red for $220
  • 295 yards of cotton in black or black/red for $75

With some lead time, she can do other colors if necessary, though she typically doesn’t keep those in stock all the time according to our conversation today. She has the option to pretty easily do blue, green, and purple in single colored reels. 

I could be in for some blue/green or purple/green ribbon, which I imagine she could pull off if anyone wanted to go in on a reel or so to make it worth the time and effort to set it up. Let me know if you’re interested. Similarly if someone wanted to split an order for silk, I could be game for that too. 

Have you tried other manufacturers? Who is your favorite bulk ribbon supplier? 

Now I’m off to find some grommets and a custom pair of pliers for them…