1930 Royal Portable Yellow Repaint Project from Hell

I have so many mixed feelings

Okay, it was cool, the idea was cool... I got the machine in original condition (gloss black) for 20$.  A Royal Portable Second Gen... How could I not?  It cost 20 because it was garbage.  Working decently garbage, but the amount of rust and corrosion this machine was full of blew me away.  "What have I done" was the first thought that went through my mind.  But it was cheap.  I decided early on that I wanted to try repainting it.  Either dark Navy, or Yellow.  Yellow machines tend to sell well, so I went with yellow.  Now this is a 1930 Portable like my red one, but this one comes with a tab and black key legends.

okay, so maybe it wasn't too bad....

Half of me thinks I should've left the patina and just got it working.  Half of me is okay with this...It might do well.

The first thing I did was dismantle the body panels and the carriage.  This is common practice with pretty much all machines I work on.  Gives me the most amount of access with the minimal amount of work.  As you notice above, the feed rollers were flatter than flat.  They were curved in the opposite direction.  This was one of the first things I knocked out of the way, followed by the felt padding on the keyrest.  Since I wanted this machine yellow, I decided to match it with the color of the felt.

The last of my rubber stock...almost

pretty not half bad.

Once this was done, and the bulk of the brush cleaning and mechanical work was taken care of (like the backspace adjustment) I turned my attention to the disaster keys.  Did I take these off and polish?  I tried on five with a borrowed pair of keyring removers.  They were so corroded that most of the glass pieces shattered, damaging the legends and causing me to have to replace and hand grind new glass parts.  Jon Posey tried sending me some spare keyglass, but they were to a QDL, not a Royal P.  Sorry Jon.....but thanks anyway.

had to re-solder this one

new key glass

Once the keyboard was back in one piece, I began to sand away the enamel coating of the original paint.  I used some power stripper, but it didn't really do much for me.  In the end I roughed up the surface and called it good enough.

Paint after primer

Well, my spray paint job was absolutely trash.  I ended up assembling the machine, and was so displeased I called some auto body shops to ask if they could redo it.  Most of them weren't interested in the job, so I called Harley Davidson, and the person on the line told me that their painter would likely charge a lot of money, and take forever to do the job.  He referred me to a man named Vince at the Paint Spot in Addison IL, not only did he strip it, but he did a very good job repainting it as well.

my garbage

this was so bad.

And here's the PRO PAINTJOB!

Looks amazing

2 undedited shots on Portra 400

Yeah I got 3, yellow is for sale.

Looks good, but man these ribbons are crap.

Got them off of ebay, I'll stick with the Sharp ones from now on

Okay, EDIT

Those fraction keys are Vogue.  The rare typeface.  Must've been a factory error.

Crazy right?  The new owner loves the machine.