Hi Woodman

First off, is this problem manifesting itself in lower case, upper case or both? I imagine the machine has been cleaned and any vital moving parts lightly oiled to ensure that everything is moving properly before any adjustments are made in order to rule out any dust bunnies or bits of paper getting jammed between parts and upsetting any precision adjustments.

By your description, it sounds like the basket is sitting too high. However, let's investigate Phil's theory first. The letters on the type slugs are concave ground to match the curvature of the platen in order to give a proper strike. To check for platen shrinkage insert a sheet of 20 lb. ( 75 g/m²) typing paper and make sure you have a fresh inky ribbon. Now type a string of the same letter while very slowly pressing the shift key.

The lower case letters should form a downhill line and disappear just before the upper case letters start to appear. Carefully examine the line of letters. If the letters become perfect before the bottom starts to fade, platen is OK. If both top and bottom of letters are faded but center is dark, platen has shrunk. If letters are good at one point, check the condition of the rubber bumper on the shift cam soft stop. If bumper is OK, then hard stop likely needs adjusting. Please note, I always recommend the use of a sheet of 28 lb. (104 g/m²) or 32 lb. (120 g/m²) paper as a backing sheet whenever typing in normal circumstances.

Simply by going on how my H3K looks, I'm thinking one will have to loosen the lock nut on the lower hard stop before the upper hard stop can be adjusted,. I don't know if there were any set-up tools for adjusting these stops, and a 90º screw driver would be a handy too for accessing this screw. If anyone knows about setting these machines, it would be Tom The Typewriter Man from England. All the best,

Sky

Hi Again Woodman

If you look at the screw you adjusted, there is a metal tab either side of the screw. When you press the shift key, you should see a piece of metal with a rubber bumper on it flip-flopping between the two tabs, these two tabs are the hard stops. The tab further up inside the machine is the lower case stop and the other tab is the upper case stop.

From what I understand, type adjustments are made with the lower case first as lower case letters are used far more often then upper case, adjust the lower case stop to get the letters printing properly, then adjust the upper case stop to align the letters. You indicate that adjusting the screw just adjusts the upper and lower case alignment.

Is it possible that one would need to loosen the nut and rotate the stop assembly back in order to get the upper case typing properly, then adjust the type alignment if necessary? Either way, this is going to be a game of trial and error, rotate the stop assembly, try a type sample, rotate a little further, try a type sample. Gone a bit too far, so rotate back just a hair's breadth and try again. Please let us know what you find in your endeavors. All the best,

Sky

I had another look this afternoon. As a result, I think your original diagnosis of hardened and shrunk platen could have been spot-on. I am still convinced that the adjustments I have been working on are simply to align upper and lower cases. I have taken both the stops off the machine and see that the uppercase stop has an oval hole at the locking screw allowing it to swing, whereas the lowercase stop has two round holes, so a fixed position when assembled and no adjustment movement. When the uppercase adjustment is fully down the tops are still a bit light. I did consider a ‘codge’ of ovaling the one hole on the lowercase stop but know that, apart from being sacrilege, it would not create enough movement anyway.
Thanks to Lauren’s van Galen I know a very good enterprise in Amsterdam whose name I have temporarily lost but they did a splendid job at a very reasonable price on the platen of my Underwood 3 bank so that looks like the next move.
Thanks for your help anyway, best wishes, Woodman.

Thanks Phil, I’ll give it a try.
Cheers, Woodman