Got it! I forgot completely about Woodstock (and have never had one). We'll spotted, Pete!

ShadyDaze, before you put a bunch of torque on that screw to try to force it out, I strongly recommend trying a few alternative options first. Typewriter screws are much more fragile than modern versions, and are sizes and thread counts that aren't commonly used anymore, so replacements are hard to find. I've broken off or worn many screw heads on the first few machines I worked on - it is worth some patience on these old screws.

Some suggestions:

1) Try a little chemistry before force. I use Kroil. Put a few drops and let it soak in for about 20-30 minutes. Then, try only a moderate amount of torque. If it doesn't go. Put a few more drops and wait again. Sometimes, I let it go overnight. Usually, if you let Kroil do its work, it'll eventually come out with almost no hard torque.

2) Buy a set of hollow-ground screwdriver bits. A normal screwdriver is wedge-shaped. This means all the force you put into it gets transferred to the upper edge of the screw head slot, which usually smashes it and causes the screwdriver to slip (or worse, breaks the screw head). A hollow-ground bit is nearly parallel at the tip, so the force gets distributed across the entire tip / screw slot, giving you better grip, much less likelihood of slipping, and is much gentler on the screw head. One caveat: because of their shape, hollow grinds are a bit more fragile than standard bits. Luckily, they're fairly inexpensive, too. 

Chapman has a great picture describing it, below.



Chapman has a set specifically for typewriters, curated by typewriter tech Lucas Dul. I've got a Chapman gunsmith set that a machinist friend gave me when he heard I was restoring typewriters, and I've gotten extras fr

Thank you Rainer for your story and inside view of history. I think it's marvellous that you have found a typewriter that you may have helped build. Few people can make that claim. Welcome!

Here are some photos of my bail spring, attempting to show the hook on the paper bail that the spring rests against and the remainder of the spring (the arm of the spring that goes to the bail broke off). I'd guess that in the resting position, the arms are about 200-240 degrees apart (or 120-160 the other direction). 

This is not normally my kind of typewriter – I usually avoid plastic shelled machines – but I had to make an exception for this machine my mother dropped off on her last visit: This is the very machine on which I pounded out writing assignments for junior high school in the early 1980s. I replaced its belt, cleaned out the lubricant that had turned to glue, and it's typing away happily just as I remembered.

(And, for other's future reference on how to remove the brittle plastic shell without breaking it, I left some photos on my TWDB entry of where the tabs are). 



The only issue with it is that it came to me with the paper bail spring broken, so the bail is just floating above the paper... which is an infrequent but recurring problem I've run into. I'll ask on another thread.