Repartee wrote:

First rate close up photos! A pleasure to look at just for their quality, and the subtle use of Totem and Taboo as a support is intriguing - I suppose sometimes a book is just a book,

What did you use to take the photos?

Yes I thought it looked staged and a bit pretentious, but I had just spread out a bunch of used book I bought with the typewriter and they made a useful base for it! The photos were taken on in iphone 5s. Good for close ups, crap for night pics..

skywatcher wrote:

Hi Torgonudho Glad you were able to reset the tension and get the machine working again. This seems to be a common problem with these small travel typewriters, the draw cord will often skip off the mainspring drum during shipping. When I ship similar units (Hermes Rocket, Empire Aristocrat, Silver-Reed) I will place a piece of masking tape over the main spring drum to keep the cord in place during transit. All the best Sky

Thanks, I see. Some plastic parts on mine were also broken in shipping, but I have glued them back.
 

skywatcher wrote:

This seems to be a common problem with these small travel typewriters, the draw cord will often skip off the mainspring drum during shipping.

Annoyingly, this seems all too usual. Others will know better than me, but in my experience, older typewriters I've encountered featured a substantial lip on either side of the mainspring drum for exactly this reason (I'm thinking of my Oliver especially, in which the drawband wraps around the drum inside a little valley to avoid slippage). I would say "They don't make 'em like they used to," but you can't blame manufacturers for not making bomb-proof typewriters. They probably never envisaged they would be regularly packed in cardboard boxes and shipped half-way across the world...

I'm glad you were able to fix it. He's thorough, that Uwe! Welcome to the forum, see you around.

colrehogan wrote:

How were typewriters shipped in the past?

I had assumed that the extra threaded holes seen on the bottom of most standard typewriters were to bolt them down in a shipping crate. Alternate suggested uses are bolting them to a tilting typewriter desk or securing them in the shop for maintenance. It's possible all three were correct. I own an SM-7 and I found a maintenance manual online which confirms the third use - presumably it would have shipped in its case - but I would be surprised if heavy office machines were not originally shipped bolted down in a crate from the factory.