The one thing that you can say about using traditional rubber is that it has been proven to work since the 1870's.  Not that I am against new developments.  If it was true that we couldn't do something because we had never done it before, we would still all be in the cradle being fed with a bottle !  I'm still interested to hear if anyone on here has tried a turboplaten on their machine and what they thought of it.  Also - and this has just occurred to me - does anyone know if there is anywhere in the world that is still capable of recovering a platen in cork ?  You get a worse paper feed because cork does not grip like rubber, but cork doesn't deteriorate in the same way either and can still be resilient after 70 years !

Here is my platen recovery technique for an LC Smith 8:

1) lightly line the platen with rubber cement
2) roll a sheet of heavyweight paper around the platen
3) type

It was all serendipitous - the rubber cement was to grip the paper because the hard platen was just so slick, but even after it dried it kept seizing the backing sheet and wrapping it around the platen, so finally I said the heck with it, that's the new platen surface. Not as daft as it sounds: it grips paper, it's more resilient than the hard rubber and surprisingly durable - seems after it's been beaten down a certain amount it does not readily get beaten any thinner and at this point it's still slightly resilient. This was a machine which seemed to taunt me to put it to the curb because of its hundred little quirky problems, so a paper covered platen just seems right.

Thank you for your comments.  I'm not sure I "did" anything to the typewriter, rubber cement does not form a permanent bond and I could peel the paper off easily enough, but perhaps rubber rejuvenator would achieve the very slight tack I was aiming for with rubber cement in a more controlled way -- no stuck paper.

The platen by the way is like slate - it looks brand new, not a sign of use but rock hard. So it is quite slick.  

When will I learn...