Blickensderfer tweaking and starting on platens

The Blickensderfer 5 typewriter is a brilliant machine. It also has an almost endless set of adjustments to make it work. One of the issues that remained was an imperfect printing of the 'z' character. This I'd attributed to some remaining tuning of the typewheel rotation-stops or something wrong with my new typewheels.

Not so.

When the letters 'z' or 'j' do not print well (i.e. the most-rotated characters), then the ink-roller needs to be adjusted down. Imperfect or faint printing was caused by the ink-roller being too high; the roller had already passed over the wheel when the rotation to the correct letter had not been complete. I.e. the 'z' as a largest-rotation character would not get properly inked. 

The ink-roller arm is fortunately easily moved - one screw (the obvious one in above photo) holds the bracket and it can be moved up or down to find a spot where it all works best.

Similarly the forked bracket that holds down the paper has an adjustment; a screw on the front-face of the right 'leg' of the top-casting. When the fork is adjusted so that it hovers horizontally just above the sheet, it works wonders in keeping the sheet in place to get clean printing! (Otherwise the paper can lift and characters get smudged a bit until the sheet is held under the rear bail.)

These adjustments were found during first testing of alternative, new platens for the Blickensderfer. The original is rock-hard, as they almost always are. Don't yet dare to send it off for re-covering professionally, so first trying to cobble-up some test-platens to see if it can make a difference. And to find out what hardness a Blickensderfer likes.

This above line was typed using a fairly crudely made cork platen. The cork sourced from cutting up a 'placemat' and wound round a newly made core. The cork itself is much too soft, so first spray-lacquered. The cork absorbs the first few lacquer aplications, adding strength and stiffness. Then a layer of PVA 'painted' over the surface to add more stiffness and close the surface, to fill remaining 'potholes'. The whole surface then lightly sanded with very fine grit. This brought the cork-platen into the workable range of hardness, and not too grippy.

It works!, but still on the soft side of the practical working window still. More test platens to be constructed and more methods of cobbling together a resilient platen surface to be tried (without a lathe :)

Project! :-D