Remington Portable typebar fitting

Continuing the rebuilding of the battered Remington Portable typewriter: The re-attaching of the springs from the bell cranks to the crescent-plate is fairly easy. The springs can be hooked by hand to the hole in the bell crank when it's lifted. With small needlenose pliers the other end is easily fitted into its hole in the crescent plate.

Yet another example of identical parts that probably aren't. The springs do have two different ends, one hook design for fitting in the crank and an elongated hook for fitting to the plate. There are left and right-hand wound springs (why...). Somewhat worryingly some springs are shorter than other springs; that may be random from older repairs, but also could be by design. Could be different lengths for different positions to compensate for different character's linkage shapes. Oh well, we will experience that when (if) it is fully assembled again.

The typebars can then be fitted. Fortunately these are all numbered, so laid out approximately sorted from left to right.

Same as with the bell cranks, starting from one end the typebars are fitted and the pivoting rod is fed into the segment one typebar at a time.

A surprise that now has me wondering about the Remington factory and its quality processes; the typebars should be stamped with the numbers 1 through 42. This machine however has no typebar 12 and two typebar stamped as number 14. 

How does that happen? Did the factory run out of #12 typebars? And then somebody took another #14 and bent it to the right angle by hand? (Is there another machine out there with no #14 and two #12 typebars?)

Notwithstanding this minor numeric confusion, all typebars got slotted into their proper places again :-)

Next up is re-assembling the ribbon-spool mechanism (puzzle!).