I don't know the insides of that particular machine, but since the keys function properly and are just laying too low, it sounds like a few well placed rubber bands could fix the problem. For the originality's sake it would of course be best to trace the problem and fix it properly, but until then a temprorary fix should do fine to keep you typing.

http://www.tori.fi/kanta-hame/Kirjoituskone_11544134.htm?ca=5&w=3
Who'll be fast enough to catch this amazing offer, Silver-Reed SR100 for only 11 100 euros!

Yeah, it's obviously a typo or well planned advertising strategy, sure made me take a closer look. But who knows, maybe someone thinks they can sell it for 11 200 euros and buys it. (In the description the seller offers a trade to pack of coffee and filters, worth maybe 5 euros.)

And on the other end of fake prices we have this gem:
http://www.tori.fi/varsinais-suomi/Vanha_kirjoituskone_11486085.htm?ca=5&w=3

I guess I could as well ask what that seller really wants for the machine, my guess would be something around 50-100 euros.

Yesterday I acquired a new camera, so I'm of course eager to use it, even though I don't truly know yet how to properly do so. Let's call this a practice run.

I present to you, a really dirty Facit Privat!


The platen has been abused quite a bit. It actually looks a bit like corduroy at this point?


It would actually have made sense to take a picture where the Z would have been visible, but at least this portrays the scandic letters. Inky!


I'd love to believe that someone hasn't tried to rip off the Facit Sweden -plate, but I fear that'd just be self-delusion.


This is not just a picture of a spring and random holes of the bottom of the machine. This is a picture of the sole spring that needs to be deattached in the removal of carriage. (Would be more meaningful picture in a maintenance related topic (that'll probably happen too.))


Underneath the carriage. A person attempting to remove the carriage would unscrew the two outer screws, and then do the same on the other side. Screw in the middle adjusts the carriage.


Oh look, there's our spring from the earlier picture!

Mysterious half of a metal plate that seems to be part of the machine, but was missing from the other side. Also, the serial number. Unfortunately without the tw-db.com I don't have a clue what the serial could tell us.

Now I only wish I had my collection with me, but no. For the time being they're in another city and I don't even kno

Unless you often write about subjects that are reasonably uncommon you're not necessarily missing much by not having all your content searchable by a search engine. If I were you, I'd focus more in interacting with other bloggers, manually leaving your footprint in places where people interested about thing you blog about are likely to find them.

Of course you should still take care of the basic search engine optimization, and make sure you use tags to categorize your posts.

There's also programs that are supposed to be able to transform scanned documents into editable text, although I have never had success with them nor do I anymore even try. Still, it's something you could look into, as you have the chance to try different scanning settings.

And please post a link to your blog when it's back up!

This came to my mind while reading this topic. I'm not sure if it's actually an Underwood #5, but that'd be my guess.
http://www.huuto.net/kohteet/kirjoituskone-vanha-underwood/307889952

If the good one's are somewhere worth over $400, I'd imagine parts are worth something too (since clearly that machine is beyond use). The auction has closed, but the machine didn't sell. Although if these machines are so common where Uwe lives, I suppose better and cheaper parts machines exist too.

Getting offtopic, but I'm suprised that Ebay allows that kind of bidding. In largest Finnish online auction website, a last minute bid always extends the auction by 5 minutes. It also has a automatic bidding function that increases your bid automatically up to the limit you set. I don't know if Ebay has this too, but it sounds like it ought to.