In Mechanica Antiqua

  I picked this machine up from the client about a week ago.  When I first got it, I thought it looked amazing, even the decals retained their original gold lettering which is something that tends to wear away.  This particular machine was one of the last carriage shift models, and as such, is more mechanically simple on the inside.  I didn't see the main points of damage until I got around to diagnosing the issue, which for this machine was fall damage.  The two carriage side brackets were both bent in a zig-zag, causing the carriage to bind along the tabulator bar.  In addition to this, several of the bolts and screws had completely sheered in half, threads separated from the heads and shafts.   In fixing damage like this, the first thing to do is take it all apart, and indeed that is what I did.  I began by removing all the rear elements of the carriage, the bearing rod, the tab bar, the margin bar, the paper table, as well as all the tray...

 It has been quite a while since I last wrote an article here.  To be honest, I was mostly being lazy.  My workshop has been flooded with repairs up the wazoo and I haven't had the time I'd like to document them.  A lot of them were videotaped and edited for social media use, but for some reason, the easier aspect of taking simple photos eluded me.  But this typewriter in particular, this beautiful red royal, had to be written about. It came from a client downtown, his Uncle painted it a wonderful deep red with silver flecks visible in the right light.  Truly stunning, though it's trip down to the suburbs in a duffel bag on a motorcycle damaged some of the paint and broke the paper release leaver off.  Not terribly hard to fix for the leaver, but the paint couldn't be fixed. For the most part, it was in well working condition, but the bane of most of my work was also handed over: the bag of parts.  Indeed after the machine was repainted, a plethor...