It's a few hours later...

Gobs of penetrating oil, rust remover, mineral spirits, lots of scrubbing - and the thing works!  I'm amazed that I was able to un-seize all the rusted parts. The only piece missing was the drawband, and on this machine it was super easy to replace.  Luckily, the mainspring was still in good shape.  The pencil holder needs to be re-formed, as it's a little bent out of shape - Not bad for a 110-year-old piece of iron!

It's still kind of ugly looking, and I need to glue the spacebar back together, but I'm super pleased that it took such a short time to get her back into operation.  Now we work on pretty...

fountainpensplus wrote:

Glad to know it went to a good home. I saw it advertised and knew it was way more work than I'd want to do. I think it says a lot about the materials and engineering that after all this time without TLC it still works.

George

Hi George,

  Yes, I picked it up in Springfield.  It was a moment of "I wonder if this one's too far gone".  Then I thought, "$20 is cheap for a little education".  Well, I gained a few new restoration techniques and got a working machine to boot.  My wife was surprised to wake up this morning and see paper in the machine with her name typed on it.   It will be hers in the end anyway - she loves the design.

Kanar wrote:

C'mon, give us some pics of your progress! 

I can imagine it will be a quite beautifyl machine after the work on it is done.
Also, I like the shape of the keys.

I'm waiting for the weather to warm up before doing any cosmetic work.  In the meantime, my wife has snagged it as a decoration in her craft room.