1923 Corona 3

The Corona 3 was introduced into the market in 1912, the same year the Titanic hit the seabed.  It wasn't always called the Corona 3 though.  It began as an aluminum prototype a few years earlier, known then as the Standard Folding Typewriter.  The name was re-branded prior to sale, and called the Corona.  Today it is known as the first successful portable typewriter to hit the market.  The design of the typewriter was brilliant, the folding action allowed it to be the smallest keyboard typewriter after the Bennett, which was introduced in 1907.  Unlike the Bennett, however, the Folding Typewriter gave users the convenience of a more familiar keyboard, backed by much easier mechanics.  The Corona 3 was incredibly popular, and was eventually succeeded by the Underwood 3 bank (which needed no prior "unfolding"), and the Corona 4, a four bank portable typewriter.

The Corona 3 is incredibly simple in its construction, using many parts found in standard sized machines.  It also can be a little finicky at times, but is still a very decent machine capable of substantial print quality.  The one pictured above was a repair job.  It needs feet, but the owner preferred to have work done by Steve Dade, which I highly recommend.  The feed rollers and the ribbon transport however, were up to me to fix.

This machine only has one straight feed roller that doesn't run along the length of the platen.  In order to remove this for recovering, the platen must come out, and to do this, the right knob comes off and the platen rod must be pushed out the left side of the machine.  When re-installing, the platen had to be pushed up against the left side to keep the line spacer in proper place before tightening it down.

The machine, prior to cleaning, was in decent shape.  I removed the two screws at the hinge pivot and took the carriage off for disassembly.  The main body of the macine was open enough that nothing else had to be removed to clean it.

front plate did come off

Cleaning the main body took about an hour, it was decently clean to begin with, but some steel wool and denatured alcohol worked well to get out any of the remaining grime from the decades of un-use.

The carriage took a little bit more work, given all the small parts that needed to be cleaned.  The ribbon vibrator system was sticking and causing the machine to lock up, so I removed the parts for cleaning.  I also removed the ribbon cups and the gears, as well as the automatic reverse mechanisms, which had a counterweight rather than a spring to keep them down.

the left one is different than the right

worm gears

also worm gears...but in HD

The bell sits on a brass tube to keep it the prime distance for ringing

Once the carriage was decently cleaned, I reassembled it and fed a new bichrome ribbon onto the spools.  These spools are significantly smaller than normal, and used a spring clip to hold the ribbon on, rather than a sharp peg to spear through it.

there's that clip

amazing decal

inscribed in the paper table

all the polished parts.  In the background is a noiseless standard

from the noisless typewriter company.  It has an aluminum platen.

I circled the good alignment

One of these two screws is for the shift, and the other for figures.  They are mirrored on the other side.  I wasn't able to accuratly adjust them given the fact that the machine feet wouldn't keep the machine at the propper height.  Different positions of the machine gave it different results.  I was going overtime, so I left it.  If the machine is given new feet, it can be adjusted later.