Starting off my second half-century with a shot of Penderyn Single Malt Whisky and some work on an Olympia SM3 manual typewriter.
Statuses
Ted Munk (Lulu)462 Pages, Professionally printed and coil bound to lay flat on your work table.
Includes:
- Basic Mechanical Theory and Indoctrination on how mid-20th Century manual typewriters work.
- Step-By-Step Typewriter Symptom Troubleshooting Guide.
- Complete 1946 OAMI Service and Adjustment Manual Covering:
- Standard Manual Typewriters: Remington * Royal * Underwood * Woodstock * L.C. Smith,
- Portable Manual Typewriters: Remington * Royal * Corona * Underwood.
- Typewriter Tools, Ribbon Spools, Ribbons, Platens, Springs and Ball Bearings Reference.
- Typewriter Typeface and Keyboard Reference.
An early birthday present has arrived!
I’m hoping this 8’x10′ non-slip rug pad can be cut down into enough typewriter pads to accommodate the segment of typewriters in my collection. They’ll both help protect my wooden tables from scratches as well as to keep my typewriters from “travelling” during use.
I may have just acquired a 1958 Olympia SM3 portable typewriter. I suspect it would make a good 50th birthday present come Monday. I’ll spend some time over the weekend cleaning it up.
I spent a chuck of the early morning and the past hour finally cleaning up my Shaw-Walker filing cabinet. I can’t wait to move it into the house and start using it. Photos of the finished product soon…
The analysis I’m not hearing about the 2024 presidential debate that is stunningly striking to me is that Donald J. Trump was asked twice about childcare and twice about the opioid crisis and all four times he actively chose to use his time to defend attacks on himself rather than address these major issues facing millions of American people. It is painfully obvious to me that he only has one constituent that matters to him—his own ego. Trump fails the test of basic empathy and humanity time and again.
Certainly Glynn Turman’s portrayal of Chiron, a centaur, in Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023) is an homage to Moses Gunn’s portrayal of Cairon in The Neverending Story (1983). Though Cairon was a humanoid in the movie, in the original book Michael Ende had the character as a centaur.
Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe Typewriter showdown. Which do you like better, the black and gray 1948 or the grey and chrome 1949?
Oxford seems to have quit manufacturing the 1/5 cut tabbed 4 x 6 inch index card guides, but yesterday I scored a bundle of 100 along with some 5 x 8 inch A-Z guides. The big win here was that the lot came for a total of $3.50!
A full reel of 660 yards of black and red nylon bichrome typewriter ribbon just landed on my doorstep in the morning mail from Baco Ribbon. Who’s up for a type-in in the Los Angeles area?
Variable line spacer surgery and some clean up on the 1950 Remington All-New.
Phoenix Typewriter from YouTubeThis is a fascinating find. Thanks for the tip.
In looking at my own ’49 5 series Clipper I notice that the manual adjustment with the H 6-5-4-3-2 L lever attaches to a short spring, then a small plate, and from there to an arm attached to the universal bar. None of the settings on my machine effect any actual change because the entire assembly is loose from start to finish. Your machine in the video does much the same as I can see the spring attached to that lever hangs loose as you move from the L to the H settings.
Given the screwdriver settings you’re showing, I’m wondering if that Touch Selector is a vestigial appendage from the 4 Series days? I do notice another nearby unused arm on the universal bar with a hook-like end on it that the spring might have been attached to to provide actual tension. Unfortunately I only have a few 4 series machines to compare with (and their assemblies are dramatically different) and don’t have any other 5 series machines to see what the proper connection setting for the manual touch selector should be.
As far as I can tell, no one’s done a proper video of the manual touch selector assembly on the 5 series machines, if in fact they ever worked at all. Perhaps something to add to the list of videos to produce the next time a 5 series Smith-Corona comes through?