Typewriter Talk / Underwood 450 Manual - In Coming...

**Posted by Pete E.** 09-8-2024 17:46:56

Ready for typewriter spay-day tomorrow.
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**Posted by Pete E.** 10-8-2024 12:01:20

Spa-day treatments all done and the chassis is "drip/drying" for another day.

Sunday the cowlings will go back on.

There were 3 functional issues presented :

1. Tab key-top was not operating any Tab movements of the carriage. Tab set/clear lever was not doing anything.

2. Both ribbon spool mechanism were bound-up and neither spool would move.

3. Back space was not incrementing any movement of the escapement gear.

I only did a deep clean and light oiling and all 3 issues, listed above, cleared up by themselves.

No bending of metal or adjustments were required.
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**Posted by Shamwari** 10-8-2024 14:10:22

Looking good!

Always nice when these issues clear up by themselves although the deep clean and oiling probably helped. Looks a good day's work.

**Posted by Pete E.** 10-8-2024 15:42:12

The ribbon cover never got any felt padding from the factory. So I did that.

Also the old, dry open-foam padding on the bottom of the typewriter pan was crumbling off...so scraped that off and added new felt padding.
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**Posted by Pete E.** 11-8-2024 10:46:42

Finished...for now.

The red portion of my new ribbon is leaving some streaks of red on the paper when I am typing in black...streaks being left below the typed line. May have to do some gentle reforming of the ribbon lift arm. It is one of those 1-sided, asymmetrical arms pivoting on the right side of the machine.

The new silk ribbon is on the juicy side...so will give it some time to dry out before I go bending anything.

Is it a great machine ? Probably not...but a very good one. I like my Erika Model 40 more than this Underwood 450 in terms of performance and typing experience. But the 450 is sleek & sexy...

p.s. I looked at my ribbon routing on the right side...and mistakenly had it routing behind the pivoting arm. Once I got it routing in front of the arm, my red smudge-issue went away.
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**Posted by duna** 12-8-2024 15:27:50

Hi Pete,
> 80 Characters ===> 208 mm in length
oh wow. Oh wow. Underwood too, then. I just got an 1963-1964 very early Olivetti Lettera 32 (despite her age in almost new conditions), green, was used by the owner to type all those years just correspondence once every month or so. Tomorrow will measure that machine typeface as well but I easily estimate (extrapolating from letters typed by that machine ) 208-209mm. I wonder if it was an European thing or just Olivetti, but I measured my Hermes 2000 in the past and iirc it was not even 203mm, it was even less than that.
Now I wonder if my old H2K is a 12 cpi machine...

**Posted by Pete E.** 12-8-2024 18:09:24

Found out, today, that the Underwood 450 does indeed have a touch-control lever under the ribbon cover along the left side.

The Olivetti Studio 45 has it, but I thought it was missing on the Underwood 450.

Metal lever that has 3 positions. I set my machine at the middle-setting. Lever moves up for the light touch and down for medium and heavy touch.
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**Posted by Pete E.** 12-8-2024 20:46:09

Shamwari,

I picked up a nice Hermes adder, as well...to keep some of my Hermes machined company.
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**Posted by duna** 13-8-2024 13:16:57

duna wrote:
Hi Pete,
> 80 Characters ===> 208 mm in length
oh wow. Oh wow. Underwood too, then. I just got an 1963-1964 very early Olivetti Lettera 32 ... tomorrow will measure that machine typeface as well but I easily estimate (extrapolating from letters typed by that machine ) 208-209mm. I wonder if it was an European thing or just Olivetti, but I measured my Hermes 2000 in the past and iirc it was not even 203mm, it was even less than that.
Now I wonder if my old H2K is a 12 cpi machine...

Hi Pete, wonderful parade of nice European machines. The Hermes adding machine is super nice.
I took a measure for 80 characters in my "10 cpi" Olivetti 32, and it adds up exactly at 208 mm too. So it appears Olivettis truly are not 10 cpi but more like 10cp(26mm). At least those I checked until now. I also re-checked my Hermes 2000 and that typeface (pica ?) is truly pitch 10: 80 characters sum at 203 mm to the best of my eyesight. Many thanks for checking on your elegant Underwood.

**Posted by Shamwari** 13-8-2024 15:58:04

Hi Pete

That Hermes adding machine looks very nice, thanks for posting. I'm now worried (and my wife even more so) that I will start getting into adding machines too. This could be a slippery slope…