Just arrived, shipment

Latest (and last, honest) shipment arrived today.

Bought via the major local online auction site. Packed with only a layer of cardboard (and tape, tape is good :) around a single layer bubblewrap wrap. The postman thankfully was careful, arrived pretty much unscathed as they usually do via the post.



and inside

In the picture it looks in great shape. When viewed up close in person - needs some work. Good thing is that the feed rollers are still pretty ok (round at least) and the platen seems fine. The feet are totally gone, seem to have taken the last 80 years to perform a slow-motion explosion.

The case does have some damage also, likely older damage and not from the last shipment. The cleats have partly just sheared off the case. Have to think about how to fix that.

But first de-gunk and clean!

Streamlined 20-ies Royal portable typewriter

The first Royal portables were afaik the boxy design, the 'Model P' and so forth. Replaced mid 30-ies by the rounded squarish design.

When did Royal make a small portable typewriter in a streamline design?

There is one listed on the local Ebay version for sale with a cover that looks more like a Corona streamlined design than anything else but marked Royal.

Where does this fit in the Royal line of portables, wondering...

Remington Victor T - A mechanical machine (very)

The feed rollers after ~75 years had become very hard and D-shaped instead of round. This made paper feed a very random affair. Even though the machine comes with a "World Service", it's out of warranty by about 74 years. 

To get the machine to feed properly again the back-rollers have now been replaced with new 'rubber' from several layers of heat-shrink tubing (in-expertly). The platen is a bit hard (noisy, but not a big issue) and seems to have worn or shrunk un-evenly (makes the paper want to go awry on linefeed). Over about an inch on the left-side of the platen it is about half a mil smaller in diameter than the rest. After having tinkered with the rollers, I'm not tackling that or taking the carriage apart in any way however.

The machine works again, cleaned and with new ribbon on the spools.

A very explicitly mechanical machine that lasts. Should be good for another 75 years :)

Trendy?

Perhaps typewriters are now/becoming trendy again. Just noticed that the user manual of a Fiat 500 (a trendy car, it's selling point is mainly it's design I think) is entirely typed.

Well, they used a typewriter typeface, the blackness of the characters are very regular for the same character. But it is even in red and black, now that is very appropriate for such a typeface :-)

Why

Testing 123

New to me, this Blogger. So some random jottings first, to see if this works. And of course to figure out a bit how it works too.