My first post to this forum
I rather like mechanical things, especially manually powered such as sewing machines & typewriters & gramophones. 
I own three typewriters:
Silver Reed 100 in orange. Very 1970s and it was my 18th birthday present in 1977. It has been well used resulting in rather worn keytips.
Corona 3 folding: Church jumble purchase back on the 1980s
Adler Tippa: Belonged to my late mother in law

All the typewriters work more or less and have had a basic clean this weekend. I was surprised to find that I could get ribbons for all of them. 
I've used them for typing address labels & completing forms.
When you look at the typewriter afresh they do beat a word processor for things such as ad hoc labels, forms, envelopes and paper size smaller than A4.

Judging from the various blogs it seems that young people buy them which rather puzzles me but then using a typewriter does rather focus the mind and helps voids the distractions of emails & the web.
The web has however been very helpful  in finding out about typewriters. I found a manual for the Corona 3 and found that the ribbon was threaded incorrectly.

I intend to use typewriters more often from now on.

Welcome, Old Grey Beard!

Howdy! I'm not a new member, but I'm back after a long absence. Life got busy, and, while the real-life with typewriters went on, my journeys into the Typosphere dwindled. 

My name is Rob. I teach high school and college writing, and I collect typewriters. I have about thirty of the things, many of which I use in my classrooms. I live and work in New Hampshire, USA. 

So, I'm back and glad to be so. I've missed reading the insight and repair tips from the people here. 

I thought I'd share something fun. In the spring, the AP Art class at my high school borrowed my typewriters to use as models for their portfolios. Here are some of the results.







Edit: Fixed incorrect image links (Uwe)

Last edited by Uwe (29-9-2016 17:14:42)

For me this typewriter thing is getting pretty bad. I started out with a flea-market-find, thirty dollar, fifties-era Royal Quiet DeLuxe. Shortly thereafter I went to my first estate auction where I purchased what looks to me like a catalogue-issued and stripped down version of the Royal Futura called the "All-American."

I can't recommend estate auctions highly enough. The typewriter bug hadn't fully gotten its teeth in me until I purchased a Royalite for two dollars last week. I really enjoy that machine and as a result of its purchase was inspired to get the "All-American" back out to see if I could fix the carriage-skip issue that had plagued our relationship to that point. (Evidently a lighter touch remedied the issue.) Since then I've been bordering on obsession.

So that's me, my typewriters, and my burgeoning disease. (I'm a serial-comma guy, otherwise it's implied that the last two items have a closer relationship than either one has to the first, right?)

I look forward to becoming a part of this community. Just from browsing around I can already tell that you guys beat the hell out of most motorcycle forum people.   
 

Myshkin wrote:

I can already tell that you guys beat the hell out of most motorcycle forum people.

Just as fanatical, though!

My typewriter collection doesn't have enough $2 Royalites. My best deal, I think, was a $15 Hermes. Congratulations on finding such a bargain. If you feel so inclined, I'd love to see a picture in the "Recent Acquisitions" thread.

Welcome to the forum, anyway