Uwe wrote:

I have no idea what "Typewriter Review" is...

I just had too look, and unfortunately found the source that I think the OP was referencing.

Sorry - actually, I'm not sorry, it's just something we Canadians usually say to start off any sentence - but all three of the reviews that I read by that blogger were laughable. There were so many erroneous statements and puzzling conclusions that I'm fairly certain he doesn't really have a clue as to what he's talking about. It brings to mind Pope's Essay on Criticism, and in particular the line "some Figures monstrous and misshaped appear, considered singly, or beheld too near, which, but proportioned to their Light, or Place, due Distance reconciles to Form and Grace."
 

Uwe wrote:

typeset wrote:

I bought the Royal Futura 800...I agree with the opinion of Typewriter Review: it feels cheap and hollow.

I have no idea what "Typewriter Review" is, but it's astounding to me that not one, but two people think the Futura 800 represents a "cheap and hollow" typewriter. Really?!? To my mind it's a fantastic portable, not only because it's well built, solid, and nice to type with, but also because it's a great design. Describing it as cheap seems like an opinion based on very limited experience, or at the very least, certainly not a comment from someone who has ever used a late '60s Smith-Corona Corsair.  

I don't know about no Typewriter Review, but I agree with typeset - though I would never send the machine away in tears with such a cruel comment. Maybe just hollow - but this is all about the touch. The (external) design is great, but I detest the touch and could not use it. I wonder - when somebody who has typed as much as you have describes it as "nice to type on" - if there were multiple internal versions of the machine. Maybe typeset and I have tried the namby-pamby-hollow-touch special whereas you have used the vigorous version, with a mechanical heart of steel?

I have not heard the opening "sorry" punctuation, but I have watched Strange Brew more than once and am familiar with the closing "eh" stop. Could these particles be combined? 

Uwe, you may have a point: I haven't used it much. My opinion was based on the typewriters I prefer: A Royal Quiet Deluxe and an Underwood Champion. 

Some observations: the sheets stick together because the keys strike through the paper and the second sheet; thus they stick together. But they don't stick to the platen. Looking through my other machines, I realized some had platens just as hard.

I'm not new not typewriters, but have little experience repairing them.Here is a story I wrote about "The Typewriter Revolution."

I've been using the Corona Four and simply love it, regardless of the criticism I've read. I'm using it to type letters, poems and my writer's journal. For some reason, I make fewer typos with it. I wonder if that means it's better suited to me for those purposes.

Uwe wrote:

 ... All of this funnels into fodder for an oft discussed subject here: when testing and reviewing old, often well used machines, how tempered should a reviewer's conclusions be concerning their performance when that reviewer's sampling size is only one?

Ah, you are too bad! (slang reversal, and calling attention to it I omit the smiley)

I had just noted this for myself. First I was primed by a comment by TypewriterKing to the same effect, and then the primer went off when I just op tested two SG-1's in close succession. One has the kind of touch I presume that people who are in love the the SG-1's touch are praising, the other, in comparison, felt hard and metallic throughout. Everything about it - the keystrokes, the margin stop - seem to have an exaggerated sense of metal hitting metal, while the other fields motion like a catcher's mitt, giving just enough to deaccelerate the motion with a thud and not a bang. If two single sample tyros were each to acquire one of these machines they might argue forever about whether the SG-1 had a wonderful touch or a harsh touch.

I don't think this is what is going on with the Futura 800, though. I had suggested they might have been made with two different innards which is possible, though I hit upon another explanation. And I do not think my Futura has suffered through use; it looks pristine and still has that new typewriter smell! I think it was only used once a year on the Fourth of July to write patriotic poems (it's red, white and blue).

And now my tyro theory! The Futura is a hammer writer whereas the SG-1 is a whip writer.

A whip writer accumulates energy from the typist's finger throughout the stroke, which is released in the thwack. A hammer writer does not accumulate significant energy during the stroke, but simply serves as a link between the typist's finger and the slug, slamming the slug into the page. So the satisfying part of the whip writer's stroke depends on the feeling of transferring energy to the machine through a noticeable attack during which the key resists the finger. The hammer writer makes no appreciable resistance to the finger and if that's what you are expecting it feels hollow or unsatisfying.

How did I come up with this bold and fantastical theory? You defended the honor of the Futura so much that I pulled it out for another trial. At first it felt just the way I remembered it, but maybe my typing technique has improved during the interval and screwing it to the sticking place I began to appreciate the machine. It rewards a classic arched finger dead-on no-slop stroke with a straight line passing through the last segment of your finger and the last bend in the type bar, and you hammer that sucker into the page, like a good keystroke on the piano where force is transmitted in the same way. The satisfaction now comes not from the resistance during travel and accumulation of energy but from the force transmitted in a straight unbuckling line through your finger and the key into the platen backed page.

(I am using force and energy and would have used momentum and power in their conversational and interchangeable sense - though I may have accidentally picked the correct concepts here)

I had more to write about what you wrote but I've written too much already. 

Repartee, I like your theory about hammer vs whip writers. I like to think of it as a matter of force versus velocity; or in motorcar terms, torque vs RPM.

Your hammer writer's finger tips are moving slower than the whip writer's, and thus has to apply more physical pressure at the end of the stroke to make an adequate imprint; whereas the whip writer accelerates the type slug up to a faster speed earlier in the stroke, and thus relies more on momentum to complete the imprint, with less finger pressure at the end.

Myself, when I consciously think about fingering the keys in a more whip-like action, I get a consistently better imprint, regardless of the machine.

~Joe