Thanks, Tom.

The only thing I've ever soldered is electronics with good old rosin-core solder, so I'm new to having the flux separate.

For typebars/slugs, is the process that you put paste on both the bar and the slug separately before you put them together? (Then heat it all up and add solder once the flux is bubbling). 

For cleaning off old solder beforehand, would a solder wick work just like in electronics? 

Thanks!

Feeling a bit too under the weather today to attempt ring/cylinder and motion adjustments on my Parade, I decided to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time: compare silk, nylon, and cotton ribbons on a number of my machines.

The results are below. Each of the ribbons is from Ribbons Unlimited and freshly opened for this experiment. The paper is Hammermuehle A4 20lb laser printer paper (it's what was on-hand). 

In general, as others on this forum have pointed out, silk outshines nylon. It is interesting, though to see how very differently the three behave on each machine. I do like the way cotton shows on pica and tend to use that on most of my pica machines, even though it requires more type slug cleaning. I'd not tried silk before today. 

And please excuse all the smudges and increasing mistakes as it goes along. Perhaps I should've stayed in bed and attempted this another day...

(click to get to the full resolution scan)


 

Laurenz van Gaalen wrote:

robmck wrote:

Now I'm trying to understand why the lowercase impression is much lighter than the caps, even though the ribbon is now correctly placed in both positions. The caps looks to be on-foot, and the lowercase is aligned with it, but the lowercase barely touches the paper. Will look at ring & cylinder, but I would expect that to effect both positions equally.

Hi Rob,

The issue you describe may have to do with how the Royalite on-foot adjustment works. On most typewriters the on-foot adjustment screws move the carriage up or down. Because the Royalite uses concentric nuts for the adjustment, the carriage is not only moved up or down, but also forward and backward. 
 

Interesting. Thanks, Laurenz. That explains why the angle of motion seems to be wrong. It sounds like a system of many variables. 

I also notice that with the motion adjusted as I have it now, the caps sit lower than the caps-lock will go (the lock bracket is as far down as it will go). Perhaps that's a hint that the whole thing is in the wrong place.

Is there an approach you'd recommend? 

I wonder if I should ignore the caps for now, get ring & cylinder and on-foot set for the lowercase, then bring the caps in to match (hoping that it lands where the caps-lock can be set to)...

Thanks, Pete! This helps a lot. It confirms what I thought the problem is: on my machine, at rest in lowercase, the universal linkage sits in the middle, in the 45 degree part of the slot, so when it starts to move, it goes down first. 

From your photos, it looks like the bar angles down somewhat, certainly more than mine, and may have a slight angle in the end piece vs the rest of the shaft.



I'll go look around mine a bit more in comparison. I don't want to start bending things if I can avoid it.

Thanks Pete! Mine has all the same parts. I tried lengthening and shortening the drive bar with the screws from photo 4, but it didn't really do anything. 

When your machine is in lowercase, and you type, does it stay in the upper position in the slot and immediately start pulling the drive bar, or does it move down to the lower (caps) position before pulling? (I know this is really awkward to see since the carriage lift springs pull the carriage up to caps position when the typewriter isn't flat.

Could you also shoot a picture from the side of this assembly? I'm curious if the black support arm (you can see at the bottom of photo 4) is lower in the machine, or if the drive bar points higher up. I've wondered if the back end of the drive bar on mine is riding too low, thus pushing the universal side of the bar too high. 

Another thought that comes to mind: my spring does have a single, stretched turn in it - I wonder if the spring tension is out of spec. Time to dig through my springs jar...