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27-5-2016 23:03:46  #41


Re: Ode to IBM

I think what you have is a Model A rather than a Model B.  I once had one JUUUUST like it.  It was a 1953 model.  It had a Sans Serif type (just like the type used on this forum, only slightly larger--a 36-pitch meaning 36 units to the inch--with some letters representing two or three units, as proportional spacers do.  From what it sounds like, you're going to have your work cut out getting things ungummed.  When you pressed the shift keys, did you get the sound of a roller cam going around, or was it dragging?  You'll get either sound, depending on how badly stuck your machine is.  You'll have to work everything until the gum is all loosened up.  A bit of diesel and/or warm tranny fluid (I like using Ford's Mercon Five) should go a long way in loosening the old grease that IBM used to LUUUUV to squirt in their machines.  Let me know how you come out.  It's going to be quite a road, and I've traveled it many many times.  Oh, and, by the way--it was a machine JUUUUST like this one I converted to dual-ribbon use.


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

27-5-2016 23:14:47  #42


Re: Ode to IBM

Oh, and one more thing--all that degumming is going to inevitably put oil and solvent on the power roller down below, making nonsense out of any contact you'll have with the cams below.  After you free up your mechanicals, be sure you get out all the excess you can.  In fact, you can even remove the power roller on this one.  On the machine's left hand side (keyboard facing you), there are three bolts holding in the roller.  Remove the drive belt (real easy) first, and then unscrew those bolts, and you can pull out the roller.  Bear in mind on the right hand side, the return mechanism will be loose so when you slide the carriage side to side, be careful so the spring doesn't spring out and surprise the livin' hoohaw out of ya.  On the side that goes into the return mechanism, the shaft is squared off and fits the return clutchplate.  It works a little like the clutch in an automobile--only it squeezes shut when you press the return.  Let me know when you get to this point.  But when you have the roller out, you have two options:  The first, you can send it to J. J. Short to have it recovered, or you can sand it a little bit to resurface it.  If you do this, remember it is only a temporary fix, and when you go to sanding, make sure you go side to side as well as twist a little bit, giving it sort of a "crosshatch" pattern.  I've had the best luck with this pattern.  Anyway, good luck, and again, let me know step by step where you are.  There are so many things I could explain along the way.  And since I don't know all the way what shape your typewriter is in, I don't know where to begin to start.  But you have told me that it is pretty stove up, so the first thing you'll want to do is to unstick as many things as you find, whether you decide to remove the power roller or not.  Again, good luck, and let me know how you do.


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

28-5-2016 10:08:34  #43


Re: Ode to IBM

Wow.  Your reply has a similar effect on me that the packing instructions I sent to the seller had on him... he was only two hours away in upstate NY, so he decided to just pop by and deliver it instead. 

I know if I lived within two hours of you my strategy would be to ask you to take a look. I would have to have a very clear workbench and very clear mind before I attempted to pull it apart the way you suggest, and even then a likely result would be a basket full of parts that I could not reassemble - just what every repair person likes to see: "Oh, good. You've already tried your hand at repairing it and have brought me a basket full of parts. So many customers are not thoughtful enough to do that these days". A camera repairman told me that jewelers were the worst in this regard for cameras.

If I got the shell off and took it outside and gave it a good squirt down with mineral spirits, am I likely to make anything worse? I could wipe down the power roller afterwards and I hoped that approach might free up enough so I could see what was actually mechanically broken. The platen is hard but the power roller is still rubbery and marked by use but not deeply grooved, so looks like a lot of life left. The rubber feet are pliable and might have been replaced recently. The shift keys - bad news - do not make any noise at all when pressed: there is no sense of a thwarted mechanical operation. Is the take up spool shaft supposed to rotate continuously with slippage and something else metering out the ribbon? Or is it supposed to move enough to advance the ribbon after each keystroke? Two rubber rollers above the take up spools seem to be in a good place to control ribbon movement but I don't see any mechanical connection with the inside of the machine.

I live in an urban row house with a backyard but no garage by the way. Hot tranny fluid/diesel fuel kinds of solutions are beyond my reach, but I can take things outside and douse them with more mineral spirits than would be safe to use otherwise. I could check into the legality of going to a local service station with one of those red gas containers and buying a gallon of diesel, but legal or not this might get me a lot of unwelcome attention. I might was well stencil on the can "For Arson Use Only". 


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

28-5-2016 16:39:45  #44


Re: Ode to IBM

I don't like mineral spirits.  They smell too much like Toluene--a strong paint thinner that does not do well on plastic (it melts it).  If you're nervous about using diesel, you can use charcoal starting fluid to clean with.  It's perfectly safe long as there are no sparks (keep the machine unplugged while you're using it), and it is more inconspicuous to buy than diesel, even though more people buy diesel for different things these days.  You shouldn't have to take anything apart to clean the typewriter--even the power roller.  You'll have to work all the linkages, including the shifting mechanism, for a little while until it seems to feel less gummy.  You will feel spring tension, but it should go immediately from top to bottom and vice versa without a gummy feeling slowing things down.  As for the ribbon mechanism, it's supposed to only advance forward with each keystroke--sounds like a roller cam actuator is stuck.  If you can, brush it with an old toothbrush with charcoal starter fluid.  You may have to keep drying the power roller with a rag or air (either from a compressor or from canned air sold at electronic supply stores).  It also sounds like the roller cam for the shifting may be stuck also.  What I would do is to clean and more linkages around, dry everything off with whatever air you can, brush the plastic typebar cams underneath to get all the black off of them, and lighly run some fine grit sandpaper across the power roller--making wide, fast sweeps right to left and vice versa.  To make things easier down there, you can remove a little link that is in the middle of the power roller--just pry it loose on the backside with a screwdriver and rotate it to the side to get it out.  Be sure that you don't let the clamp part rotate on the little rod.  This adjusts how high the ribbon vibrator goes.  But getting this thing out will make cleaning a lot easier, and it goes in easily as well.  Again, good luck, and I hope I helped.  Let me know how you come out.


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

28-5-2016 16:44:13  #45


Re: Ode to IBM

This is the very kind of typewriter I was hoping I would help someone to fix.  I've seen hundreds of these, and have a few in my collection, including a 1962 IBM Executive typewriter with a 20" carriage.  It's a project typewriter I once had working, but used parts off of it to fix other typewriters.  Now I am going to rebuild it to its former glory.  It was a typewriter I used to write my mother's eulogy.


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

28-5-2016 16:47:53  #46


Re: Ode to IBM

Repartee wrote:

Wow.  Your reply has a similar effect on me that the packing instructions I sent to the seller had on him... he was only two hours away in upstate NY, so he decided to just pop by and deliver it instead. 

I know if I lived within two hours of you my strategy would be to ask you to take a look. I would have to have a very clear workbench and very clear mind before I attempted to pull it apart the way you suggest, and even then a likely result would be a basket full of parts that I could not reassemble - just what every repair person likes to see: "Oh, good. You've already tried your hand at repairing it and have brought me a basket full of parts. So many customers are not thoughtful enough to do that these days". A camera repairman told me that jewelers were the worst in this regard for cameras.

If I got the shell off and took it outside and gave it a good squirt down with mineral spirits, am I likely to make anything worse? I could wipe down the power roller afterwards and I hoped that approach might free up enough so I could see what was actually mechanically broken. The platen is hard but the power roller is still rubbery and marked by use but not deeply grooved, so looks like a lot of life left. The rubber feet are pliable and might have been replaced recently. The shift keys - bad news - do not make any noise at all when pressed: there is no sense of a thwarted mechanical operation. Is the take up spool shaft supposed to rotate continuously with slippage and something else metering out the ribbon? Or is it supposed to move enough to advance the ribbon after each keystroke? Two rubber rollers above the take up spools seem to be in a good place to control ribbon movement but I don't see any mechanical connection with the inside of the machine.

I live in an urban row house with a backyard but no garage by the way. Hot tranny fluid/diesel fuel kinds of solutions are beyond my reach, but I can take things outside and douse them with more mineral spirits than would be safe to use otherwise. I could check into the legality of going to a local service station with one of those red gas containers and buying a gallon of diesel, but legal or not this might get me a lot of unwelcome attention. I might was well stencil on the can "For Arson Use Only". 

Oh yes, and one more thing:  I have very often had to go back through typewriters my customers "helped" me to fix.  And not only did I get the machines in pieces, I also had to add some pieces they forgot to include.  It's okay, I charged them for the parts I put in.  Of course I didn't gouge them on those accounts because I knew at the time they weren't made of money any more than I was (and still am).  Otherwise, they wouldn't have attempted these repairs themselves.
 


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

28-5-2016 17:17:59  #47


Re: Ode to IBM

As always, thank you for your guidance and encouragement. I shall not give up before I begin.


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

28-5-2016 20:39:59  #48


Re: Ode to IBM

Never say die, my friend.  You may know more about this critter than you realize.  Feel free to ask all the questions you need.  I'll help you through it best I can.  I used to LUUUUV repairing these brutes!!


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
 

18-7-2016 00:14:42  #49


Re: Ode to IBM

I probably shouldn't have resurrected this thread, but I've wanted to give my two cents about IBM especially now that I finally have a *fully* functioning Selectric (there are still a few kinks I need to work out).

When I had first heard about the Selectric, I didn't think much of them because I, like Repartee, assumed they were just more of a printing device (turns out all we had to do was wait until the Wheelwriters for that). It was not until I received a Selectric for free last year that I found out that it's much more complicated and interesting than a Wheelwriter. When I got the platen and top case off, that is when I realized I needed a skill level of at least 50 out of 100 to even understand what was going on. It looks me until I inherited some Selectric repair books from a local retired technician that I could finally get the old girl up and running after spending the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st sitting in a shed or a garage letting all sorts of creep crawlers borrow underneath it's hot, sticky, gooey foam (and believe me, there were a lot 

From an engineering standpoint, the Selectric is in my opinion, one of the greater inventions of the 20th century. Those guys back at IBM must have worked around the clock and smoked at least a 2 tons of cigarettes cumulatively to produce such a fine instrument of precision and perfection. I can appreciate the quality of the Royal 10, the engineering of the Olivetti Lettera 22, and the precision of the Olympia SM-4 even more, but to have something of quality, engineering, and precision of the Selectric, to me at least, is way out of the league of any other manual typewriter that I've seen. I don't think it's fair to compare a manual to the Selectric because they are so different from each other in design and function. They're on two totally different end of the "typewriter" spectrum.

What I love and admire most about the Selectric is how it's all mechanical. I know that the electric motor drives the operational shaft, but that's it. Ok, electro-mechanical but whatever. In theory, it's possible to create a treadle powered Selectric since all it needs to do is drive the operational shaft. How cool would it be to reunite the typewriter with the means of power by a foot peddle? A fully mechanical Selectric would have no practical use, but it'd be an interesting exercise. 

Anyways, I just wanted to show my appreciation and respect for such a wonderfully thought out machine. 


A high schooler with a lot of typewriters. That's pretty much about it.
 

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