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Hello friends,
I stumbled across this typewriter at an antique shop in central Maine last month. The owner seemed to know very little about it except she guessed it was 20s. I looked it over, the carriage and keys were sticky, had some cracked glass and no doubt been sitting uncovered in a barn. I was a bit hesitant to pay her asking price $80. I offered her $55 and she accepted it. My girlfriend and I went in halfsies and walked out with it.
For three days of on and off cleaning I removed all the panels and got to cleaning. I blasted out dust with compressed air, degreased the moving parts, scrubbled the dirty nooks and crannies and finally oiled moving parts with a light sewing machine oil.
Platen, feed rollers, bale rollers, it needed them all. Lucky my friend at Portsmouth Typewriter had these parts from another Royal 10.
Other repairs: tighten linkage to margin release, replace glass. After all that I added a nice blue ribbon for character
Pictures !
I have to say, I really enjoy standard typewriters as oppose to portables. The only problem now is my girlfriend wants my half and we argue over whose house it is to stay at. This typewriter is a problem child.
Jefferson
Last edited by Typo207 (09-9-2014 13:55:57)
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Very nice machine, and congratulations. It's always impressive to see how a little elbow grease can transform a typewriter.
I'm confused by the title of this topic though? What's a "SX Secretarial Edition"? I know that Underwood prodcued two SX models, and that Smith-Corona manufactured many different variants of its Secretarial model, but I've never heard of a Royal model called the SX Secretarial. Given your machine's date of manufacture, it's possible that the serial number on it has a SX prefix, but to my knowledge that was never a model name, just a description of the model range (s=segment shift, x=variant). Your machine looks like a Model 10 to me, so could you elaborate on where you got that model name from?
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Ya let me correct that, the serial number starts out SX- xxx…when I look at the typewriter database this indicates 1932 I believe ? It is a MODEL 10.
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Nice post, and nice typewriter! It looks great! I like the blue ribbon too. How does the typing feel on this machine? Does it have a light touch?
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Thank you, it's a great machine.
Typing on it is pretty good. It has a medium Touch id say. My favorite to type on is the royal KMMs. They fit my fingers perfect and doesn't require a whole lot of effort.
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Hello Typo207. I recently began cataloging known examples of SX Royal typewriters and would appreciate it if you could share the serial number of this machine for my list. I am attempting to determine the commonality of certain features of SX typewriters, and yours is the only SX I know of so far (and only the second segment-shift Royal 10 I have seen) that has accounting keys that don't match the rest of the keyboard. Serial numbers I have collected thus far include: SX-1510139, SX-1564005, SX-1569247, SX-1580327, SX-1589251, SX-1612107, SX-1612880 and SX-1616291. Curiously, the first serial number dates that machine to 1931 while all of the others here date to 1933.
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I am also in the process of restoring a 1933 Royal 10 with an SX serial number; SX-1569247 on that list. Hopefully I'll be acquiring another SX-10 parts machine (SX-1589251) that got Keychopped and taken apart. Nobody else was interested in the parts and I'm working on making a deal to save the rest of the machine.
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I would, that's quite an interesting color scheme. Little bit of tlc and I'm sure it will be typing in no time
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Wow nice find! Those royal logos are almost always faded to a solid white in front of the type bars.
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@Kville That is a factory refurbished Royal 10. A factory would strip them down, and repaint them to look more "modern" for the time.