Smith Premier 10 aka "cash register"

March 14, 2026 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I guess we are lucky here, in Sweden: these machines are not liked, most collectors or ordinary people consider them ugly and unnecessary big. As long as the first point is indisputable (taste) the second is a misconception. If one see only a photo of this machine, with double keyboard, it is easy to get that impression. But in real life they are not bigger than any standard typewriter. In fact they “feel” smaller because of their wedge-like shape and open construction.
A bit like Royal 5 “flatbed”.

Anyway - as they are not sought after, when they pop up they are cheap so I could get two machines for very little money. One was in good, almost working condition. The other was beaten and rusty - it became a donor and a “guinea pig”.

Without fear of damaging my “keeper machine” I put apart the donor, harvesting all parts I may need. First come the keys - they are easy to pop out, sitting in their open-tubes just with friction and small extrusion which prevents them from turning around. Clever design and easy to work with.

It is tempting to unscrew the top plate for easier cleaning and waxing, like I did on Flatbed. One should restrain this temptation - there will be a heck of the job to put it back!

The plate itself is also a quite sophisticated subassembly. Luckily it usually is not that dirty as it sits up-side-down. With all these felt pads and clamps it could gather lots of smelly dirt if sitting somewhere in hens-house.

Type arms on this machine are hanged on ball bearings. As there is one sign per slug, and per arm, there are a lot of bearings organized cleverly in two rows.

It must have been expensive to manufacture these arms for sure. I admire delicate form of these parts!

Actuator springs for each arm are smartly hidden under the bent, steel cover, protecting them from dirt and unintentional decoupling.

Type arms are anchored in middle-segment by hooks, not thru-axis. I suspect it was caused by this large amount of elements to accommodate there, it would be a challenge to thread them all through when assembling the machine.

Feed rollers are easily accessible if one needs to work on them. After the carriage is removed (very easily, no tools required) one needs to just unscrew the cover plate.

Small rollers sit on common axis. Knurled end of this axis suggest that it shall be pulled out as red arrow points below.

Similar procedure for big, back rollers. Easy.

This machine has an interesting tabulator mechanism. Basically one has 4 tabulator settings on rotatable single tabulator bar, with tabs formed to engage with one of four prongs related to specific “tabulator program”. Good explanation of this is given by Geir on his channel here.

Another intriguing design within this system is tabulator brake. It consists of a bottle filled with graphite powder - at least today it is a powder, we speculate that it may be that it was a thick paste, oil-based, when the machine was new. But it works anyhow even if it is a powder now.

Wire-propeller inside the bottle is connected to tooth-wheel and by compressed powder friction is able to slow down the carriage when it flies to the next tab-stop.

Compression of the powder is adjusted by a big nut (yellow arrow), small screw (green arrow) is locking the position.

Carriage glides on four sets of bearings. On my machine one of these bearings was empty - all three balls were out. That was causing uneven movement and rattling. There was also something holding the carriage at the very end of its travel.
Stop positions for both sides are done with small extrusions on both sides.

Screw which engages with them is close to small wheel which in turns glides on two sets of toothed rails beneath. To protect it from damage and easier work I unscrewed it.

With these removed one can easily slide the carriage rail beyond its end-position, to expose ball bearings. If done carefully balls will stay in place, especially if one angles the assembly so that good-old gravitation keeps them in place. Here the top-bearing is visible, void of balls.

Stop screw which should engage with carriage end positions gave a hint what happened with the carriage bearings. This screw now being too short caused carriage to “jump” at the end position and end up jammed on the stop extrusion.

Clearly it was sheered and judging from metal color it was not long ago. I replaced it with one from my donor-machine.

With the machine clean and working I had one last detail to attend: line spacing clutch mechanism. It is working but the axis was missing its chromed knob, leaving just small nuts to protect fingers from pain.

I found some spare knob from more or less same era and drilled one end of it to accommodate the nut.

Press-fitted the nut and voila!

I added the second nut to be able to lock it in position.

Traditional photo session follows.

Keyboard controls:

Some features on the back of the machine. Ribbon reverse is done within cranking handle on the side but can also be directly steered between the spools.

Ribbon threading is a bit more tedious than usually. Below is a picture of how it should look. Good description and way of doing it can be found on Brian’s video.

Type slugs, one per arm, sit by friction fit only. My machine had missing some so donor specimen came to help.

Type-alignment is perfect.
Typing feel is very good, in the same class as Royal 5. Definitely a machine which can be used for serious typing even in our times.

My machine came with a bit oversized steel-hood and poorly-preserved wooden base-board.

Top veneer was held in place only by screws and fittings, warped and water-damaged otherwise.
Bottom part had its veneer gone, exposing wooden slats and machine-holding screw wells.

Things were held together by friction only, the glue has since long turned into dust.
At first I thought of moving the fittings to a new board which I planned to fabricate but after removing the top veneer I decided better of it.
It´s never too late to give up.
Why not try and preserve this original board, shall we?

Top veneer removed, fittings unscrewed and brushed from rust clean. Some apparent mishaps in manufacturing of this board are now seen once veneer is gone.

Taken out for sanding and cleaning joints from the old glue.

Reassembled to mask-tape vicinity of areas to be glued.
I also plugged unnecessary holes someone chose to drill in this beautiful, old-growth oak from the last century.

A day later the glue is cured, the board cleaned and sanded again, ready for stabilizing soaking in epoxy.

Once all was cured, cleaned and reassembled again the machine has its baseboard back and rocking!

Bolts to attach the board to the machine were gone but I found that M5 bolts fit perfectly to this otherwise imperial-threaded holes. Happy coincidence.

With this little accent I consider the restoration to be finished, for now.

Hermes 8 Standard

March 01, 2026 by Lukasz Kumanowski

This machine has its history gone - I bought her from a person who, in turn, bought her on second-hand somewhere, not long ago.
Sad because the machine had traces of incompetent repair and it was being used by someone with long nails, judging from damage on key tops. A woman, I suppose.

Anyway, when she arrived (the machine) she was typing but carriage return was giving ugly rattling noise. Nothing Swiss-made machine shall do. Also ribbon selector was jammed in one position. What I also instantly noticed were several butchered screws in places where nobody really should try unscrew anything, if not for major rebuild.
Not good signs.

Removing body panels was easy - all screws butchered so I will replace them.
Platen and feed rollers removal was mostly obvious so I did not make pictures but I documented how it all goes together again so bear with me.

I was afraid that I will need to pull the carriage out - which is not obvious here as on Ambassador or Olympia SG machines. Luckily it was not needed: the rattling sound was from tabulator mechanism:

I carefully formed it to clear the tab sets. But how on earth did somebody manage to bend this? It is very heavy-duty piece of plate, with reinforcing weld!
Or maybe there is another story - maybe the carriage got knocked off? Or changed?
After forming this piece all started to work, butter-smooth. Alignment is perfect so it was only this tab-setter.
I can see that someone was trying to unscrew the carriage rails from the casting. Judging by the screw he/she luckily did not manage removing it, only mar it disgracefully.

Damage was quite fresh, metal has not oxidized yet so last 5 years is what I guess.
I could not let it sit there so I removed all these - one by one to not affect perfect alignment - and replaced with new screws. All these were sitting damn hard - presumably from the date the machine was assembled.

With machine out of its body I blow out most dust and chicken feathers and carry on with troubleshooting.

Ribbon selector. After playing with it the vibrator stopped moving altogether.
Let’s see, there is some structure there which does not exactly look Hermes-like, does it?

Not the most elegant repair but after seeing these screws I am not surprised by that either.
Not engaging vibrator was related to ribbon selector profile being too high in its position.
Why? Broken or bent linkage, I suppose?
Let’s see.
This does not look kosher to me:

Rather obvious, especially on Swiss-machine where all is so perfect and so beautifully engineered. No need for chicken-wire really.
After forming it back to shape - and by that adjusting ribbon lift height - the machine is again capable to type in duo-chrome and stencil mode.

What was left was to clean her thoroughly and assemble back.
There was some surface rust on type arms, only a few of them so I decided to clean them in situ, instead of pulling all out. The segment was clean, I blow it with compressed air and flush with mineral spirit anyway.
Getting rid of the rust.

Type rest is made of soft, silicone-like pipe. I remove it for cleaning, it was oily and sticky. Proceeding with deep cleaning of the whole mechanism: mineral spirit, IPA, compressed air - the usual stuff.

All clean and ready for assembly.
Bottom frame, horizontal members, are removable. Rubber feet sit on them, holding side-panels with their screws. I put them back before checking alignment - to have the frame stiff for any troubleshooting. Feet are in bad shape, I will need to fabricate new but for now they will do.

To put back the platen one just drops it in. It’s easiest with the carriage all the way to the left - contrary to most other machines.
The extrusion on left internal wall of the carriage forces you to start from right and then fiddle in the left part of the platen in place.

Left platen knob subassembly with line-freeing ratchet clutch:

Screw with friction-washer is to adjust how easy clutch disengage shall be. Hole in protective sleeve is to reach this screw when all is assembled.
The whole thing sits on the platen shaft and there is no need to disassemble it.
With platen in place we slide the shaft from left side of the carriage - until it emerges on the other side. Nothing strange. Just keep set screws unscrewed to not hinder it. They are on both sides of the platen cylinder - which is symmetric, by the way. One can rotate 180 degrees the platen and use it that way, for whatever reason.

Left side will look like that:

Now the bottom first part of the platen knob goes into its place. It is held be two long screws which are to be screwed into line advance ratchet:

Go slow not to damage these threads. Screw each screw a bit at a time and switch between them - the whole mechanism is nicely tight so it will not tolerate skewing, resulting in binding or damaged threads. Before finally tightening everything down - align your inspection opening:

Before going any further - put back carriage panel. Just three screws. Mine were marred so I replace all of them with brand new - easy on metric machine.
Once the panel is in place we can put back the platen knob. Mounting screws go into clutch-plate as below:

The other side is self explanatory - just a platen knob with one set-screw which shall grip on flat part of the platen shaft. Voila!

What was left were some small cosmetic issues.
Protection felt pads for paper support were gone. I cleaned the rests with IPA and glued silicon “bumps”. They look neat and do their job better than felt.

These marred screws… I cannot stand them.
I go over the machine and replace all the eye-sore butchered screws with new - or I repair these which are good enough to do it.
One case was challenging. Here my predecessor failed big-time and left me such mess:

These two screws are holding a panel protecting carriage release pivot points. Just for esthetics but they sit here probably from the dawn of time and they got properly seized in place. That’s why he/she failed, leaving such a mess.
I could not remove this wreckage either so I had to drill away the damn thing.

Left-thread tapping drill is the tool for this job:

Gotcha!

Threads undamaged so I can substitute this with a fresh screw:

Some battle-scars left but, well, better this than this catastrophe which was before.

New ribbon and we shall type!
The ribbon reverse mechanism relies on rivets near ribbon ends to function. Sure, one can tie a knot and call it a day but… this is Hermes. Let’s make it nice, shall we?

And off we go!
All back in place, waxed with Fulgentine. Typing! What a joy!

I am grateful to Adam for “enabling” me to buy this machine.

What took me, apart from its gracious form, was special way they hang the carriage.
Also that this standard machine is not so huge, a bit in-between a portable and a modern standard machine. Not a hefty beast like SG3 or Siemag!

I had an impression that this Hermes 8 is indeed not bigger than Hermes 3000. At least in footprint. Let’s see.

Higher - yes, but not bigger. Heavier, a bit, too.
That says a lot about how manageable it is, for a standard. Or: how big Hermes 3000 really is, compared to other portables.

I typed some more, on both machines, and I can say that they feel very similar.
At least my specimens.
If that is true then I would probably chose this Hermes 8 instead of Hermes 3000 for daily typing, given how expensive H3ks are today and how comfortable it is to have a space to put document we copy on the front panel of Hermes 8.
Simple but useful feature.

Yet one more feature - for someone who thinks about shipping this machine or loading it into car trunk for creative typing on the way: use factory-provided carriage locking infrastructure!
There are M5x10 threaded holes on both sides of carriage casting:

Short M5 bolt with generous washer on each side and we can lock the carriage in position in-between spaces - which makes the star wheel decoupled and protected for transport.
Since I shuffle my machines quite a lot I made me fancy knurled knobs with rubber washers so that I can put in / remove them easily without tools.

Once placed and tightened on the machine they lock the carriage. They are big enough to be obvious - should I ever forget that I put them there.
To avoid frustration.

It stopped snowing so I took the machine home, for a photo session.

Ribbon selector is an odd “pin” sticking unobtrusively out on the right side, just shy of carriage rail:

Some life-scars from long-gone brutal history on the back panels. I managed to bent most back but with side-light they still make themselves visible.
I will call it patina and just let them be.

Paper supports lifted:

Carriage is wide enough to put A4 paper in landscape mode.

Fantastic machine!

Erika Standard after face-lift

January 17, 2026 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I got her through an auction in Gävle some years ago, former owners and the whole history is gone. As an Erika-fan I wanted to put my hands on Erika Standard and make it part of my arsenal.
Grim offered similar Erika, in very rough shape, as a donor for mine, in case I need to swap some worn parts. After coming back from him I decided it is time to put her on the bench.

She was working, if not a bit reluctantly. Main issue was general dirt and sluggishness of the whole mechanism. Plus many slaughtered screw-heads, as if someone approached her with a chisel not a proper, hollow-ground screwdriver.

Disassembly of main modules.

Tabulator mechanism comes apart easy. Black arrow shows triggering subassemby already removed. To detach tab-rail one unscrews 4 screws shown with yellow arrows.

Following that I detached the whole carriage. Easy on this machine, just four screws.

Apart from general dirt the keys were in a state of despair: seemed like oil-damaged legends, rings dirty and darkened. Too much for simple cleaning - I decided to rebuild them from bottom up.

I prefer key-rings which are of press-fit style, with no underneath metal tabs as they are less susceptible to damage. This Erika has the second type, with tabs.
I carefully un-bent them before popping the ring out. I have no dedicated tool for that so it takes a while (and a good deal of patience).
Cardboard spacers below are glued to metal. These will also be replaced.

Old legends look better than I thought. It was dirt on glass which made them look awful, not oil damage - I could put them back again.
But I won’t.
I want this machine to be more welcoming, less serious. For me black legends with “whitish” lettering gives very serious look to the whole machine.
I’ll change that - now when I put so much time in removing all these keys there is a good opportunity for that change.
Key rings got doped in cleaning solution.

While keys are soaking I take a look at type-arms rest assembly. It is loose and seems incomplete. I use the machine from Grim as a reference - yes, there are rubber spacers where the type arms rest attaches to the frame.

They are missing on my machine, holes through the casting are then too wide for bolts keeping the whole thing together.
I will need to fabricate new spacers.

Now it was time to properly clean the whole mechanism.
Grim´s Erika got screwed apart to tiny-tiny bits and all useful parts and screws were harvested. Being a rust-bucket and non-functional she at least had all screws in pristine shape. Just dirty and with surface rust.
Not much left after that but still very useful in postmortem study: how things are put together, without risking damaging my machine.

Compressed air, brushes, white spirit and then more compressed air.

Rest of the machine waits for its turn at the far end of my bench.

Key-rings were soaking long enough to start working on them. Metal brush comes handy in removing gunk rests.

Rubber feet were damaged on my machine. They are robust, thick and nicely formed. Donor machine had them in better shape so I will use these but my old ones can be useful in other project. I repair broken rubber.

Withe the machine clean I start putting things back together.
Tabulator triggering assembly is a bit tricky as the pushers are spring loaded. Notice also that there is a date stamped on the inside, dating this machine to 1943.

These tabs need to meet when all is screwed together so they need to be in retracted position.
My way of keeping them so is to use tooth-sticks. They hold spring-loaded tabs with friction, well enough to make them mate on the machine.

One needs to wait with attaching this until the carriage is in place, otherwise the tab assembly is in the way.

I fabricate new rubber spacers which will keep type arms rest in place and provide additional sound dumping for the type arms rest assembly.

Time for the platen assembly. I compare with donor machine. Grim´s Erika is younger, I can see how the factory was simplifying the construction to reduce machining costs.

In the foreground lies Grim´s machine platen. Clearly platen knobs and free-line clutch assemblies are different.

Putting apart the newer, Grim´s machine - clutch assembly:

Now for my older machine:

Comparison of platen shafts, older being much more complicated to manufacture for sure:

Before removing the clutch I need to take care of these butchered screws.

Replaced with fresh ones, looks much better.

I carry on with removing the clutch and platen shaft. It is seized in place so good, abrupt twist is needed to remove the whole assembly.

I needed to soak the clutch to get it moving before attempting any further.

It took a good day to make it moving and be able to put apart properly.

Cleaning and lubricating.

To put it back one needs to disengage the clutch pivoting arm, otherwise it will prevent the assembly to glide into platen´s cylinder. Easiest is to turn the platen up-side-down and press the business end towards the bench. This compresses the clutch and retracts pivoting arm. Now the platen can freely glide over it.
It is this arm which holds against internal cylinder and keeps line ratchet from spinning in normal operation. To release line ratchet one compresses the spring which pulls back the arm, removing the friction.
As on all other machines. But on Erika it is a bit more elaborate, seems like.

Now onto the platen itself. It seems it was re-coated at some stage, the rubber still has some life in it.

I decide to keep it and just smooth up the surface. Turns out very well.

A side note about butchered screws: when disassembling Grim´s machine, deep in the intestines of mechanism I found some spectacular examples of servicemen bad job. It cannot be the user, it was accessible only after removing big part of the mechanism:

So there were “butchers” in the old times, too!

Now to the keys. I made two sets of key legends, printed on Sweden Bond (ivory white) and on standard, white paper (for Anton, extra-white fan):

Given age of the machine I chose Sweden Bond, ivory paper. Typeface - I tried with key ring to have a better look.

Harrington must it be!

I have different sets of key rings and plating color differs on these when one puts them side-by-side.
That´s why I never mix them in one jar but keep different batches separately. Small differences, maybe, but will be visible if mixed up on one keyboard.

For ivory-white legends I chose warm-silver rings.
We need new cardboard spacers so I cut a set and glue onto key arms as it was originally.

Putting legends and rings back on place. It is tedious job without proper tools but the effect is the same. The machine starts to look as a typewriter again.
Tabulator red key transplanted from Grim´s machine, mine was cracked at the base.

Putting all back together, clean and waxed with Fulgentine.
There is one detail though which can escape ones attention: paper table screws. They must have a spacer installed, otherwise the table will rub against carriage rollers housing.
On my machine they were gone, donor machine had only one, made of leather.

I make new ones from rubber.

Paper feed rollers gave me headache - it took a while to figure out how to remove them for cleaning and truing.
The whole machine is so well thought-over but for the life of me I could not see how servicemen was supposed to remove these rollers without screwing (and hammering) apart the whole carriage assembly.
I used donor machine carriage for my trials.

Eventually I came to the process as follows:

First remove springs which keep rollers under tension towards the platen. Quite ingenious design indeed.

Next undo set screws holding spacing tubes on place, to get more room for wiggling rollers´arms.

That is enough to spread these arms a bit to free paper rollers with a flat screwdriver.

That does the trick.
Is it how it was supposed to be done? No idea. Nothing was damaged this way and after putting things back together all works as it should so there you go, we figured it out.

Just for kicks I removed old rubber from donor platen, to expose beech-wood core in very good shape. Might be useful in renovation of some other old-timer.

Keyboard assembly done, I am pleased with the result.

Time for long waited typing-test!

How does it feel?
Well, if one expects the “wow!” factor as in case of portable Erika 5 vs Remington or other brand then no, there is no big difference between Erika Standard and other standard from this era.
With Underwood 5 being a benchmark here I would say that my particular Erika Standard types equally well but not better.
Which means it is a great typer!
But nothing sticks out good or bad as compared to other standards. For Erika enthusiasts like myself I want to keep her as a part of collection but if someone looks for a machine to type then it does not matter if it is Underwood 5, this Erika or any Continental for that matter. My opinion.

Photo session follows!

Klein-Continental with tiny typeface

September 28, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I bought this machine on Internet auction, which now seems like a good luck. Would I be able to test her before buying I would probably not do it - and that would be a shame.

This is Klein-Continental typewriter, luxury model in their range. It is a bit tricky to follow model line for these machines but Typewriter Database and oz.Typewriter are fantastic help here.

The ultimate guide for figuring out which model of Conti we have is Pelicram´s web page.

There was a lot wrong with this one. I knew that type arms are in half-erected position but I thought it is usual WD40 glue issue:

Well, it was not. It was far more serious.

At first I doped the mechanism in mineral spirit for one day, with hope that it will dissolve the old oil and free the movements. No, it did not make the trick. Many type-arms were properly seized and hardly moving, still.
She needed a proper cleaning so I removed all type-arms and links, to open the operation theater.

It became apparent that it was not WD40 when bits of comb fell off, too.

It seems someone was “running her wild and leaving wet” - in arctic temperatures. What otherwise could cause such damage and cracks, casting looking porous and brittle.

With heavy heart I decided to sacrifice my otherwise perfectly working Continental 350 and transplant broken part to this patient.

Rebuilding the whole mechanism - but something still was wrong.

Turned out that the segment had also same issue and in some slots it “swelled”, prohibiting type-arms to move freely. Well, another transplantation was needed.

The next challenge was to get all the links fit together, in sometimes very crowded constellations. I had to make some fine-tuning so they move freely side-by-side in confined space.

Finally - all in place and all type-arms resting nicely on type-rest.

Still keyboard to fine-tune: keys are on different levels now.

But before further surgery - test typing!
Oh yes, it is worth the effort to save this machine, the typeface is so small (18 CPI) and so nice!

Moving on to correct keyboard levels. Another catastrophe happened when I exerted too much force on a key lever. It has a soft spot where spring attachment hole is drilled.

Another transplantation then. It requires opening the whole mechanism again - bummer!

Once this was done I tweaked key levels by adjusting links length - instead of trying to bend key arms. More work but much safer.
Next thing was to renovate feed rollers and the platen.
To access feed rollers one needs to unscrew two small screws on the bottom of the carriage.

With this unscrewed it is easy to wiggle out both rollers.
Trued and clean - back in place.

Another issue - TAB was not working reliably, sometimes releasing the carriage, most often not. By setting these two stops a bit higher I got the TAB to work reliably again.

Space-bar and TAB-button were flaking paint. No use to keep that - I scraped it back to black and sanded satin-smooth.

Assembling back the whole machine. Body panels got cleaned and waxed with Fulgentine.

Side panels have lead-stripes taped on the inside. I can tell by weight and white lead-oxide forming on the outside.
My theory is that this was to prevent vibrations during typing, dampening the noise by changing resonant frequency. But that is just my theory - anyone knows why some machines have this?

Next step was to fabricate new platen: the old rubber was hard and uneven.
To protect plated line-ratchet assembly I remove it and fabricate an adapter to be used on the lathe instead.

After removing a few millimeters of hard rubber one arrives at non-oxidized layers.

Just for kicks: I measured hardness of the original rubber coating.

I chose to use transparent vinyl of hardness very close to the original: 85 Shore A. Leaving the steel core polished and visible will make a nice match for green body panels.

With new platen and fresh ribbon - time for long-waited typing!

Last thing to do, for now, is to change key legends. At some point someone sprayed the machine with oil and it soaked into paper legends, making them yellow and dark. I substitute them with fresh ones, that usually makes the whole machine pop up in presence.

Job done!
Time for final photo-session before she gets employed in typing routine!

Typewriter platen re-coating

August 17, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I have one machine with platen re-coated by JJ Short. It is a benchmark quality and it is the most appropriate for such ancient machine.
The issue I have with doing it for all my machines is that, well: I have too many candidates and I simply cannot afford sending all these platens for professional service.
… and I am a bit afraid of the package getting lost.

Besides - where is the challenge in this?

I was looking for an alternative, some other process which I could do in home workshop without breaking the bank.

Cork

Inspired by Oliver with cork platen I had a brief adventure with making these. Started with Blick by using synthetic cork. It prove to be too soft.

I then imported natural cork stripes, bonded together with some modern glue. Unfortunately that too prove to be too soft.
It was certainly not cork itself but the glue holding cork bits together.

My conclusion was that it is a dead end. Modern PU-glues used for making cork sheets are simply too soft.
Trying to make them harder by soaking-in superglue or impregnating with varnish was a desperate and failed try.

Heat shrink tubing

This DIY method is widely used.
It kind of worked for me for long time although I was not very happy with surface finish. Maybe it was the material I used?

It is essential thou that one uses a lathe in the process, even if it feels unnecessary. Heat shrink tubing very rarely shrinks uniformly, throwing concentricity of the platen through the window.

Grinding this on a lathe gives such ineven surface finish. It can be, as stated, material with such defects. It can be that grinding I did was too fast and caused heating up the material and “bubbling”.

I saw no future in this to spend more time in fine tuning the process anyway.
There was another idea, much more promising, lurking on the horizon!

Vinyl

While searching for rubber hoses of adequate diameter and hardness I stumbled upon vinyl hoses. Transparent ones.
That reminded me that there is already someone who refurbishes platens using PVC, he called his product “turboplaten”. I found this seller on eBay: Writertypes
There are generally good reviews of his service, with some concerns regarding affecting escapement timing. Interesting!

Keeping that in mind I started experimenting with developing my process.

The first “patient” to treat was Corona foldable with broken platen.

Primum non nocere, I thought, it can only be better, even with experimental platen.

Using standard lathe tools I managed to turn this down to required diameter. Fine-grinding to obtain the final diameter.

Resulting platen became milky-whitish.
Not bad but could be better. And grinding process was a pain in the neck.

Adam was brave enough to send me his platen, for Erika 5, to recoat in this process.
I managed to minimize scratches on the vinyl and decrease “milkyness” of the result but still there was a potential for improvements.

As a comparison to heat-shrink-tube platen the surface is much nicer, even if still milky.

Only after I made my own tool for turning soft vinyl I could finally achieve the result I was after: transparent platen which can be customized with color/texture/text!

First “patient” for this platen was black&red Royal. It had broken platen when I got it, repaired with heat-shrink version but I was still not happy with the imprint.

Platen core is wooden on many old machines.

I used a newspaper from the day when the World markets went down, showing red charts everywhere. Matching nicely red body panels - at least one positive thing in this whole situation.

It prove to be quite sensitive material to turn with my tool. Some lessons were learned at this stage.

Another trial and finally the new platen is ready!

Test typing.

The imprint is better but most importantly the machine is more quiet. And I like the look much better than with heat-shrink.
Paper handling is superb, too - vinyl is grabbing the sheet like a bulldog.

After a few days of using this new platen I got confident that this is the way to go. Especially for mass-produced, non-unique machines like most in my collection.

Next specimen on the bench was early Halda which I bought while traveling to Norway. She got comic-book platen, with Swedish version of “The Phantom” from SvD.

A typewriter friend sent me his platen for early Facit P1.
Here we went wild and chose bright green color, to nicely match green keys on his Facit.

Measured hardness of this material is around 85 Shore A. Which is on the lower part of appropriate hardness spectrum.
I found another supplier of vinyl, this time a bit harder. We have not yet measured its hardness but I estimate it to be 90, circa. Which is optimal for me.
I already started making platens for my other machines using this new material. It is bluish and not as transparent as the first one so I use it mostly for single-color (or black) platens.

Here are some recent examples.
Facit P1:

Olympia SM4:

Print quality on this Olympia was good even with old, hard platen. With a new one it still is very good but also the machine types more quiet.
Not a ton but a tone lower ;-)

Results & discussion

So far, with my limited experience, I have not encountered any problems whatsoever with these platens.
They are not more “bouncy” than standard rubber, I would say they behave same as my proper rubber platens from J J Short.

Someone mentioned a risk that “bouncy” platen can affect escapement timing.
I am yet to experience that.
All the machines I did live perfectly happy life afterwards. But maybe my material is not more bouncy?

What I like about these vinyl-platens is that I can make them myself at rather low cost. Sure, one needs a lathe to make it but, honestly: how can one be happy without a metal lathe??? ;-)

To be able to customize color or background is a plus for me, too.
With two types of vinyl I use now I reserve clear one for older machines which would match warm look better. Blue vinyl is more suited to more modern machines and to solid colors. Like standard black or blue. At least how I feel right now.

Example of different “feel” with both materials shows sample below.
It will be a “musical” platen for old Erika 5.
I chose Bach notes, inverted to negative and with sepia tone for more warmth.

We are about to test Facit platen with bright green core, soon, so no hard rules here either.

Last but not least - this is perfectly reversible process.
The platen material is a consumable, once it gets damaged/hardens/owner-does-not-like-it it is easy to replace without harming the machine.

Poshed up Olympia SM carrying case

August 02, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I saw people remove paint from these and expose beautiful plywood from underneath rather boring, hammered-enamel gray paint.

The paint on my box was already partially scrapped, exposing promising beech-wood plywood.

I decided to remove all the outside paint. One on the inside is still in pristine shape - still nicely pretending to be metal.
Hot-air gun and scraper make the job very easy and assures that only paint is removed, not plywood.

Hand-sanded and vacuumed it looks much nicer already.

I especially like these streamlined shapes, as on sports car from 70´

I decided to keep the wood unstained. I like this case to be in lighter color, in contrast to all others which tend to be dark or totally black.

Woodworkers favorite moment: oiling! Brings out wood grain beautifully.

All hardware screwed back in place.

Handsome piece of office equipment!

Torpedo 12. The looker!

May 10, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

At first I thought it is a ‘14.
Torpedo 14, that is.
Closer inspection (serial number) and some research - mostly Robert Messenger’s excellent web page here and here - showed that what stands on my bench is Torpedo’s first portable typewriter: Model 12.
Serial number is on right side of the carriage. Manufacturing date for my specimen is around 1928. Soon she will become 100 years old!

Now: the machine is not mine. She belongs to Sara.
I got an opportunity to work on restoring the typewriter to working condition and she will go back to Sara.

Nothing worked initially. Neither space-bar nor key-action moved the carriage - but the draw-string was attached.
Escapement was somehow not clicking. Well, I started disassembling.

Closer look and I found the reason: one small spring was missing.
I found spare spring which should match required elasticity, installed it and the machine woke up to life!

As always in so old machines - paper feed rollers were busted: flat spots, cracked, rubber petrified and brittle.
To remove them one needs to hammer out the axles. They sit with friction fit.

New rollers made with silicone tubing and heat-shrink:

Back in business - in situ:

Draw-string attachment was not looking kosher to me.

I replaced it with appropriate end-piece.
(This tiny nut comes from an old mechanical clock I found in the woods some years ago. I kept the mechanism and whereabouts, finally they become handy!)

This machine is a very early construction.
It does not have automatic ribbon reverse system - one needs to reverse it manually by pulling - or pushing - small levers on each side of the machine. On this one they were missing. I manufactured copies, based on pictures from Internet.

Threads M2.5, or close enough to match. Installed:

Rubber feet with threaded inserts - this machine is screwed to base plate, part of the carrying case. I managed to find matching rubber inserts.

Platen is hard, of course, but not cracked or excessively used. Interesting that axle rod is permanently mounted, riveted on both ends. No ratchet clutch on this machine.

To install this assembly one pushes left side of the platen (with platen rod) into central hole on the carriage. Line advance claw needs to be lifted up to clear ratchet wheel. Then the right side of the platen is dropped into slot on right side of the carriage.
Platen is held in place by a latch, screwed in place afterwards.

Screw head holding this latch was butchered with improper screwdriver. I hate it, especially on a machine like this one, with hardly any other screw damaged.
I made a new screw from an old stock I have, same pre-war era.

In situ:

Same for platen knob screw - the one sitting there was butchered. I made a replacement.

This machine has bi-chrome selector so she should be able to use duo-chrome ribbon. It was broken thou and locked in black position. That needed some attention then - I made a new lever from steel plate.

Installed:

Once having this back in operation I spooled duo-chrome ribbon and started playing with ribbon color selector.
To my horror - it did not work reliably. On RED position, when ribbon vibrator goes all the way up, it often stayed in this position and ribbon was hanging on type guide nearby.
I tried increasing tension on vibrator´s spring by replacing it with a stronger one but that did not help much.

I tend to think now that the selector lever was intentionally broken and left in the only working position: for BLACK. So that no one messes with it.
Well, I’ve already made a new one so it will stay but I don’t know how to repair the problem with hanging vibrator at RED position.
For now, I think, we will just accept the fact that she is typing only in one color. Let’s call it age & patina, shall we?
I spooled fresh, black ribbon and did some typing.

Apparently I still believed it is Torpedo 14 while it is, in fact, Torpedo 12!

New feed rollers take paper like a bulldog!
Not bad, no?

Apart from occasionally hanging ribbon vibrator I discovered one more problem.
This specimen was unlucky to have someone who very enthusiastically treated line advance mechanism.
It was not working reliably - sometimes advancing 1 line, sometimes advancing 1,5 line. Turns out it was bent.
I bent it back to shape - or rather “formed it” as used in the industry. Works like a charm again.

The weather was fine so we went out for a concluding photo session. She is quite a looker!

One can clearly see Remington connections, type arm mechanism is the same:

She reminds me other Remington portables, like Remette or Model 5 (streamliner).

Honest patina on space bar. Decals in very good condition!

Most controls are on left side of the carriage.

Line-advance is a pinch-lever (black arrows).
Two line-spacing settings: single and 1.5 line space (red arrow).
Ratchet release (but no clutch - yellow arrow).

There is also rudimentary carriage lock: small lever (yellow arrow below) with a tooth, going into carriage rail to lock it (red arrow).
Works fine as long as you don’t press shift accidentally.

Very handsome machine. Typing action is similar to Remingtons of that era.

I very much prefer to type when the machine is detached from its carrying case. This Torpedo has its own rubber feet so this is possible.
Lap-typing, thou, was not yet discovered back then - the whole mechanism is unprotected from below. Setting the machine on your knees means trouble!

So there we have it - another survivor!

Stoewer KsM. Spooky Scary Skeleton-shift machine

May 03, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Stoewer Kleinschreibmaschine (KsM for short). I worked once on its younger sister, Rheinmetall KsT although it was not my machine. Until now I never owned one of them so when I saw Stoewer for sale I grabbed it.

Adam claims that these are best of the best of the best (with honors) portable typewriters. I had to try myself.
First thing I noticed is that this is also a skeleton-shift machine. Same as Rheinmetal KsT.
It also has this cool feature: carriage removal is very easy, just flip two latches on the back and voila!

My specimen was mostly very dirty and lacked some screws.
Disassembled for cleaning.

Paper-feed rollers were in good shape, just hardened and dirty.

I removed 0.2mm of oxidized rubber to expose still elastic rubber underneath. No need to fabricate new, yet.

Everything is very robust on this machine. After removing the platen (standard procedure, central rod can be removed from either side) nothing falls into pieces and all stay in place, firmly secured.

Skeleton-shift has a main advantage of lower mass being lifted upon shifting but also: shift adjustments (fine-tuning) is right there, very accessible.

Apart from dust and some dirt my machine had some surface corrosion on chrome-plated controls. Since there is no trace of that anywhere else inside the mechanism I recon it was bad plating and/or previous users were sweating very corrosively…
I’d rather have no plating than corroded one so I polished away damaged plating up to clear steel. Satin finish is my preference in that case.

A few of glass keys have custom, hand-made legends. I could, of course, change that to one matching the rest of the keyboard but I decided to leave them in place.
They tell a story, although I don’t know what is that story.

With carriage removed one can study closely parts of exposed mechanism. End-of-line lock and the bell are a robust and refined assembly.

Ribbon advance is directly connected with spring motor advance.

All threads are metric on this machine so I could easily replace missing screws using my stock of old screws from the same era.
Machine put back together and waxed with Fulgentine.

Test typing with (almost) fresh ribbon. All seems to be good!

Typing action is very pleasant, the mechanism is tuned and very snappy.

Traditional photo session followed.

Serial number is clearly visible on the back. According to this source my machine was produced sometime between 1926 - 1930 in German Stettin (today it is Szczecin, in Poland).

Bar-Let. Tilt-shift, no draw-band gem from Nottingham.

April 27, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

If I recall correctly it was Adam who sent it to me. The poor, little fellow (typewriter, that is) was reacting only to space-bar but carriage was not advancing when keys were pressed.
Turns out it was this spring which was missing.

After adding it the machine woke up to life, although reluctantly due to thick layer of debris everywhere.

Thin and lightweight as she seems - it still has an outer shell which can easily be removed. After unscrewing a few short screws the machine can be wiggled upwards and out.

Segment and a few other parts are in cast iron, all the rest is pressed plate. Hence light weight and, probably, lower production costs.
My specimen was too dirty to consider simple cleaning. I decided to pull off the segment and type bars for deep cleaning.

Order in which type-arms are installed. Makes life easier to document each step.

When removing the platen one is wise doing many pictures of both sides of the carriage. After the central rod is removed all falls into pieces. Here is my reference gallery, it prove useful when building up the machine afterwards.

Nice thing about carriage on Bar-Let is that it tilts upwards upon FIG and CAP and there is only gravity which keeps it from tilting all the way. One can lift it up 90 degrees and easily gain access to underside of the works.

Each type-arm link seems to be same as others but they are not. Each belongs to one and only one arm, they are custom-formed into these “kind-of” ornamental forms.
I found out the hard way that keeping links assigned to their arms is a wise thing if one does not fancy metal-puzzle games.

Paper-feed rollers were busted, as expected. They sit on brass wire, pinched in place, locking it. One must cut it to remove the roller.

I made new rollers from silicone tubing and heat-shrink sleeves.

One last thing was to adjust escapement dog spring. The original was becoming too tired.
When the carriage was at the beginning of line (spring at highest tension) it was too much friction on the star-wheel to pull back the loose dog.
I’ve adjusted the spring by making it 2 coils shorter.
That is, by the way, a cool mechanism on Bar-Let: there is no draw band. Instead the star-wheel is itself spring-loaded and it is this which drives the carriage. Works fine on such lightweight construction, I suppose.

And so the cleaning and basic adjustments were done.

I assembled the whole mechanism, spooled a fresh ribbon and tried typing. Type alignment was a disaster, many arms stopping in type-guide due to misalignment.
It took a good deal of time to make them work at least but there is still a good bit to go if one wants to achieve proper alignment.

Not sure I’m gonna try further with improving the alignment. It is not a machine I would like to write longer texts.
I took her home for a concluding photo session.

Same as Robert Messenger I am also under the spell of this slightly curved keyboard and ribbon spools turrets.

Simple controls on this machine.
No bi-chrome selector, instead manual reverse and no-ribbon-advance (for spooling) as middle position.

Dedicated, standard width ribbon spools.

Line-advance as pinch-it lever. Single and 1.5 line advance. Ratchet release (non-locking). That’s it for the left side controls.

Right side houses carriage release (pinch-it, again) and single platen knob.

Serial number 10360 places its production around 1933.

Barr Universal. Slightly different animal

April 19, 2025 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Two of these landed on my bench: one in Pica, one in Elite. Both had several problems, apart from dust and dirt.
Common problem for both were smashed paper-feed rollers.

It usually is no issue to remove these but not on Barr.
Here, for some reason, they decided to thread both ends of each axis, leaving no place where one can grab it and try unscrewing. Entire length of all axis is covered by rollers or spacers (also rolling).
Moreover - even if you manage to get hold of the axis - you cannot unscrew them. Thread is too short to unscrew on one side and it gets screwed into the other side while you try.
In short: they did not plan to replace these, it seems. To remove them one needs to disassemble almost the entire carriage.

Well, after struggling to find a way to do it properly I finally gave up. No way I’m gonna remove rivets etc to dismount them from the carriage.
I decided to cut them out and make new, modified for future service.

Measurements of existing parts. In case of rollers I needed to guess their diameter - they were so deformed.

Cleaned old rubber on a lathe. It turns out that big rollers were mounted on brass pipes while small ones on steel.

I leave spacer rollers with their patina (brass). Freshly cleaned rollers will be covered with new rubber so shiny metal will not be seen.

Turning two sets of axles, for both machines. I use steel rods from old IKEA bookshelf.

It turns out that metric thread M2.5 is perfectly matching UNC thread which is originally on the machine (I suppose). I threaded my rods so one side of machine supports can be used with their threads. The other side got its thread removed and will accept new axles as THRU. They will be secured with nuts on both sides anyway.

New rollers were made from silicone tubing with heat-shrink cover, for period-correct color and to fine-tune required diameter. Mounted on the machine.

Next problem: snapped draw band.
Spring motor on Barr is located on left side, under the cover. I made a new string from strong twine, re-used original fastenings used with cotton band.

To add tension to the motor one does not need to wind it by hand while holding the drawband. No, on Barr this is civilized: firstly remove the locking screw.

Then just wind the spring until it is enough to draw a carriage all the way. Service manual gives exact value for tension: min 2lbs when carriage on position 40. I eyeballed it on my machine.

Next problem: carriage binding when trying to move with carriage release controls. For that I needed to remove the carriage, suspecting problem down there. It is easy on Barr - just two screws, one on each side. After detaching draw string the whole assembly is simply lifted straight up.

It turned out to be slightly bent bracket which is being pressed by carriage rail gliding above, when carriage release is used. Formed it back into shape.

One of my machines was having problems with typing in red. It was either totally crazy and unreliable or causing the ribbon vibrator to jam.

Jamming was especially dangerous when in shift - since Barr is a basket-shift machine it was causing the whole basket to jam below derailed ribbon vibrator.

To adjust it one needs to find a sweet spot in two places, adjusting each one of them separately and VERY SLIGHTLY at a time.
It costed me many hours and lots of cursing to find the spot for my machine. It can be done but requires lots of patience.
First we need to adjust position of the plate below, by easing the pointed screw. We aim at having ribbon vibrator erecting links to form a straight line when the key is pressed. I cannot show it on the picture but service manual describes it.

Once this is done we move to another spot, under the machine. By adjusting these two nuts we increase or decrease the throw for ribbon vibrator.
A word of caution: it requires very small adjustments, like 1/2 turn of a nut, to reach the proper position.

Well, with that fixed all the rest was easy.
Both machines had busted rubber feet. Luckily our local typewriter-supply shop could provide me with exactly matching rubber feet replacement. Originals, hard as plastic, look like that:

Modern, state-of-the-art replacement from Biltema looks like that:

They do the job perfectly and fit in carrying case alright. What not to like?

Ribbon spools on Barr are slightly narrower than modern Pelikan, plastic spools. I managed to find steel spools fitting perfectly.
Fresh, nylon ribbon from stock roll:

… and both machines are ready to fly!

Barr-typewriter is one of these underrated and looked-down machines which is utterly unfair.
They are different from all other but typing action, at least on both mine machines, is perfect. I would compare it to old Remingtons or Royal Portables: snappy, responsive, very satisfying.

Most of controls are housed on the carriage. Barr has additional handle on the right side, used if one wants to just move the carriage but not advance the line. Line advance lever is on the left, like on most other machines.

Feed-rollers pressure release lever has additional, pinch-action lock. It hooks on the back of the carriage and keeps rollers in disengaged state. No other machine has such feature, as far as I know.

Line advance selector is an arc of holes:

Speaking of line advance: I admire shape of the line advance arm! Reminds me sophisticated lines of Groma N!

Ribbon selector is located in usual place, on the right, above keyboard. There one can chose between top and bottom position. To chose Stencil mode we need to draw a separate lever on the right, bottom side of the machine:

Small lever marked with yellow is ribbon direction selector. Machine will reverse ribbon direction automatically as well, of course.

Carriage lock is implemented by means of pressing down line advance axis. It looks solid and bulletproof.

Margin and Tabulator rack is hanged on hinges, spring-loaded. One can lift it up, to see better while setting controls. Rack´s digits are etched up-side-down for that purpose.

Will Davis has an interesting article about this type of TAB solution.

Keyboard is more or less standard 4-bank layout. What stands out is that Shift.lock is on the right side only (but released by both Shift keys) and that Margin Release button is vertical.
In my writing it works equally well.

All in all - very sexy machine.
Typing feel is perfect, controls are straightforward even if a bit different than what we are used to.
Robust, no-nonsense machine for heavy writing. I totally agree with Robert Messenger on that.