Month: February 2016
Safari!
Its safari time! The time when I go out in search of you know what’s…
Can you guess if any which I bought?
Remington Portable 2 – $125
Remington De Luxe Model 5 – $70
Smith Corona Silent – price unknown
Royal QDL & Royal Mercury – price unknown
Not a typewriter but typewriter related – $22
Royal QDL – $20
L.C Smith 8 – $125
Would you have bought any of these typewriters?
Typewriter Atrocities on eBay
There seems to be a alarming amount of sellers on eBay who seem to do nothing more than destroy fine old typewriters. I have compiled the worst of them into a list with each case getting a rating on the Typewriter Atrocity-O-Meter (1 being not that bad to 10 being reserved for the people who have the nerve to destroy Smith Premiers and Hammonds).
Do you see any reason someone should remove the keys from this Royal KMM? I don’t either. Now I know that a KMM is a dime-a-dozen typewriter but still it looks to be in good shape.
Atrocity-O-Meter Rating: 2.2
Whats worse than destroying a fine Royal KMM, a Royal P with the woodgrain finish of course!
And of course when selling the disassembled machine on eBay, they don’t include the key levers, which I’m sure we can all deduce what happened to those.
Atrocity-O-Meter Rating: 4
Now this typewriter is not rare at all but every one of these destroyed by the Keychoppers is one less Underwood 5 in the world.
The Underwood 5 is such a great writing machine it is such a shame that this one was destroyed for chintzy jewelry no one wears .
Atrocity-O-Meter Rating: 1.3
This next one makes me sick just looking at it…
That’s right, someone went and butchered a Remington 6 (a upstrike machine). Now unlike some of the other typewriters on this list, this one has a higher chance of being saved as any good woodworker can make new key levers. Then you would just apply my patented Re-Keying technique of making new keys.
Atrocity-O-Meter Rating: 8.7
You might be thinking “does it get worse?!” well unfortunately, yes it does get worse.
Hammond Multiplex Folding.
I…I don’t know what to say…
Atrocity-O-Meter Rating: 9.8 (it didn’t get a perfect 10 because some of the keys are still there).
Saved from the Keychoppers: 1928 Remington 12
Who Wants to build a Typewriter?
I have been very busy recently with a project
This
This is a 1928 Remington Standard 12 that was rescued from a Keychopper who had unfortunately already removed the keys. When I got this typewriter it was in a sad state completely frozen with rust and covered in badly flaking crinkle paint (it was probably rebuilt in the 40s). So I did what most people would never do to a typewriter, take it completely apart. Once it was apart I sent the frame out to be bead blasted and repainted. A few days ago I finally got the frame back from the paintshop. After about 5 hours of work it looked like this.
The keys that are on there are faux key charms from Jo-Ann crafts. They work well for replacement keys for keychopped typewriters. After finishing up the lower frame I moved on to the top deck.
After a few days worth of work the typewriter was at a state where it where I was ready to test it.
The result? It works to a extent as I had to push the carriage along as the drawband is not installed but I put some carbon paper in the machine (the ribbon vibrator is not working because all the typebars are installed yet) and I was greeted with a line of cent symbols on the page. As you can see the left margin stop and the indicator are not installed. the reason for this is in the long period of time I had the typewriter disassembled in a box…well lets just say some parts have got up and walked away. If you have any Remington 12 parts machines please let me know.
Just Typewriters 