Hi from Georgia, new member and typewriter enthusiast 

I have not used a typewriter since high school, but my typing class in the 60s has served me well. I took the class to meet girls and learned to type as a side benefit. I've always been drawn to mechanical things to learn out they work, taking a deep dive that usually goes in 5 year spurts, then on to something else. Cameras, darkroom, guitars, RC planes, cars, and so it goes. I wrote a screenplay and made an indie film about 5 years ago. If i had used a typewriter it might have slowed me down and I would have done a better job. 
Typewriters acquired in the past year:
- Consul 225 (66?)
- Smith Corona Super Silent, '56
- Smith Corona Sterling, '54
- Smith Corona SCM Sterling  

Nice little forum ya got here. . .  be a shame if something happened to it; like having me as a member. 
Best,
Mike

 

Hi all,

I'm a typewriter collector currently based in Germany (born here, raised in England). I got my first typewriter in 2016 -- a Smith-Corona Classic 12 -- and have been hooked ever since. I now have a small collection of mostly German machines taking up a lot of space in my apartment. I look forward to drawing on the expertise and experience of others who share this passion and, where possible, contributing my own thoughts and tips!

-Alex

Hello from Edinburgh, Scotland.

I suspect my story will familiar to most of you - I decided that my writing process would benefit from using a typewriter for my first drafts because typewriters are designed for one function with no added distractions. Having looked for one machine, I suddenly find myself with three (Adler, Facit, AEG Olympia, one more in transit (Citizen X3), and one unidentified one that a neighbour is going to get out of his attic that belonged to his father.. I also have an exasperated spouse and a cluttered desk ...

Anyway: I'm Ian, retired, a writer of weird fiction and happy to be here. 

Hello from Newfoundland, Canada, to which I have recently retired after an academic career in Scotland and Ontario.

Why typewriters? In my final years at work, I grew frustrated at how absurdly difficult it became to print small jobs (labels, envelopes, etc.) from a computer. Perusing the stalls at an antiques mall one weekend, I saw an Underwood Touchmaster Five for sale ($60), and could not get it out of my head for the next week that a magnificent machine like that was exactly what I needed. I like vintage tech, and quality, lasting tools of all kinds. The next opportunity I had, it came home with me.

On getting it home, and putting it through its paces, I realized that there were issues with the tabs system. So I went online, learned about basic typewriter maintenance, etc. I am pretty mechanically and DIY inclined, so I did some disassembly and cleaning, and discovered that a small part holding the cylinder was broken, a little arm that holds the cylinder via an adjustable pin on the Touchmaster Five. I thus needed a parts machine, so went looking in the local classifieds. There I came across an earlier 1950s Underwood, the Touchmaster One. The lady selling it wanted $30, I think it was, so it came home with me too. It cleaned up beautifully and very quickly I saw that it worked splendidly with a very fluid action. Still needing parts for the first machine, though, I shortly acquired another Touchmaster Five locally, extracted the broken part from the first machine, and, on having a good look at the arrangement, decided against cannibalizing the third machine, which I thought could be saved. Instead, I made a replacement part from scrap metal for the first machine. Works pretty well, I think.

Thus I have come into possession of three late model Underwood standard typewriters. One has a Pica typeface, and the other two Elite; one has a normal sized carriage, and two are 15” machines.

Retirement and relocation entailed that these were crated (wood crates were used for the move, with all proper precautions) and in storage until just this week, when I unpacked the three and set them up in our new abode. I’ve been building some shelving, and having finished that job, I decided the machines should be unpacked. I’ve just been using the third machine, in fact, a 15” Elite TouchMaster Five, to print up some labels for books (I’ve indexed my library and had some additions).

Still some work to do with the machines…. I’ve posted a WTB today, but won’t go into that here. The 15” Touchmaster just mentioned seems to have an occasional binding problem on the carriage, which may be related to all the vibrations in the move, so I will try to make an adjustment tomorrow. I’d also dearly love to find some ribbon covers for it, but that will be for another day. For the present I have made some from sheet copper.

Oh, by the way, you know how people say the Touchmaster is no looker? I think the hammerhead 15” model is a much more elegant machine. The normal one? Meh, but it screams 1960s and I do very much like it for that. Of the three of them, though, the 15” Touchmaster One is my favourite. It just feels better.

And that, fellow travellers, is my introduction.

Thanks for the welcome.

Weather here in winter, since I am literally about 60 feet from the coast, tends to hover around freezing; the ocean moderates both winter and summer. The continental winter climate where I spent the last two decades in SW Ontario, on the other hand, was both much colder and snowier than here. The qualification in my present location is that if a winter storm happens to pick up moisture from the open Atlantic, the effects can be pretty dramatic, with the locals skiing down the harbour hills in St John’s and so forth. Winter may throw a spanner in the works for a week or so now and then. But then there’s a melt.

Today, for instance, in deep winter, it’s sunny, around minus 1 (Celsius), and I can go for a walk along shore if I like without much fuss. I have a view out the window for miles, and snow is nowhere to be seen. So the moral of the story is that winter in Nfld  is not so bad. What’s bad is Spring. All that deep salt water takes a long time to warm up.

I’m fairly rural, so the typewriter collection will have relatively few opportunities to grow locally. That is no doubt a good thing, making for peace and harmony with Herself et al. It would be better in any case to use what I have than to have too many to know what to do with — having said which, were a little 1940s Remington Noiseless or the like come up on kijiji somewhere within reach, I’d most likely be on to it. I dare say I could make room for one more lost mechanical soul.

Fixed the Touch-Master Five earlier this afternoon, btw. It turned out to be the infamous Tab break, with the plastic gears that some genius in Hartford designed for the thing. A little washer and the tiniest shaving from one of the plastic teeth that had gone out of alignment in the plastics (plastic coats a proper metal gear, for some reason, while the gear it meshes with is also metal) adjusted the mechanism sufficiently to allow for it to work properly. Another reason to prefer the first version of the Touch-Master, methinks, as it has an older, less complicated, tried and tested Tab break mechanism.