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13-4-2015 14:13:32  #11


Re: Cleaning Help

If it was me, with my limited experience, if a good cleaning doesn't fix it, I'd trace back the mechanisms from that switch and see if something is missing or disconnected.  It seems possible that the part of the mechanism that unlocks the carriage is working, but the part that unlocks the keys may not be.  I don't have one of these machines so I have no idea how the locking mechanism works, that's just something I'd jump to as a logical thing to investigate in my mind.  I'd start with cleaning as Kat and others have suggested though.

 

14-4-2015 15:54:59  #12


Re: Cleaning Help

As it happens, Richard Polt has just digitised a wonderful little booklet on taking care of a typewriter: Hints for a Happy Typewriter. Very useful! 

N.b. editing in to say that he says WD40 is 'okay'. But I've emphatically heard not elsewhere. And I wish you could get a new platen for $20!! Having said which, not sure how the cost-of-living index stacks up but getting a platen re-rubbereised now costs £110 here in the UK. I have a couple of typewriters I would love to do this too but omg the money. Then again I could just stop buying them for a bit...

Last edited by KatLondon (14-4-2015 16:02:58)

 

14-4-2015 19:56:55  #13


Re: Cleaning Help

WD-40 is NOT "okay"! I used it last summer, in my early collecting days, on an Olympia SG3. The poor Olympia has never recovered. I've tried penatrating oil, dry lubricant, gun oil. mineral spirits, denatured alcohol, and then finally I dunk cleaned it to no avail. It remains as sluggish as ever. After each failed chemical I would clean it up, so I wasn't building up gunk or anything. That WD-40 is stuck and I am at my breaking point!


 
 

15-4-2015 10:01:01  #14


Re: Cleaning Help

I see that Richard Polt has just edited the document to remove the recommendation of WD40! Other than that it seems a genuinely useful little booklet.

 

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