Jump to content

Mechanical alternative to watches, for occupying spare time


Recommended Posts

As the title States, I have found another early mechanical device in order to occupy my free time between watches or while waiting for replacement parts from overseas. I picked up this 1915 Underwood Model 5 Typewriter. I plan to do a full restoration on it. Mechanically it's in shockingly sound condition. A bit rusty, but nothing a good soak in some Evaporust won't take care of. The only part missing is the drawband, the part that provides tension to the carriage and allows it to advance with each keystroke and return at the end of each sentence. I've already got a plan to address that. The platen (roller) is stiff, but there is a company that offers a restoration service, if the pricing is reasonable. Somewhere over the last 105 years, the machine was repainted and all the original decals were painted over. Thankfully there is a seller on Etsy who has recreated all the decals for nearly every vintage and antique typewriter. This weekend I will be giving it a 24 hour soak in evaporust and then rinsing it and making sure it's dried and oiled to prevent any further rusting. I will then begin masking it off to sand, prime and paint a high gloss black lacquer like when it was new. Then decals and order a new black and red ribbon. I'm excited for it. The best part, the typewriter only cost me $30. Will share updates

20200711_105241.thumb.jpg.1b08aacb10b93f3d139d5a1f838b8eaa.jpg

20200711_105319.thumb.jpg.87bc5c284d5bb79fb9216d25f7a1b030.jpg

 

20200706_162117.thumb.jpg.521198902a5b7b3932bcf500cb891d83.jpg

20200706_162128.thumb.jpg.4924127b864f99527fb8be2361640298.jpg

20200706_162151.thumb.jpg.4693ec58104bb6abaf07aa8ac87e8e54.jpg

20200706_162200.thumb.jpg.7f037bc925cea56d3963f6bd1fc2db70.jpg

20200706_162208.thumb.jpg.f7cae3cfe4d72bcfca002e5575ca0abb.jpg

20200706_162252.thumb.jpg.a37974af7f6d8b6a6abb2960f774918c.jpg

20200706_162335.jpg

20200706_162342.jpg

One interesting sidenote, someone has compiled a database for typewriters nearly identical to the pocket watch database. An invaluable resource!

Edited by FLwatchguy73
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good luck with it!  I love those things, but am just running out of room.  I gave away a perfectly gorgeous Woodstock to a local railroad museum when I retired  and left the city.  It was since then that I learned of the platen restoration guy.

I used some of the very last manual machines made in my work.  Olympia as I recall.   Literally made by the company from spare parts stock.  Nothing sounds like those things at the hands of a skilled typer. DING!

....But - I really am out of room!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Stevelp said:

Very Interesting!  Good luck!  I couldn't help but notice how closely the wheel in your 5th picture resembles the index wheel and fingers of a Bulova Accutron (at least I think it does)

That is the escapement that controls the ribbon feed. Each time your strike a key or hit the spacebar it advances the ribbon a bit so you don't hammer all the ink out of just one spot.

20200715_121846.thumb.jpg.3a23e02cac19258ba0bdc0dd67f7ce58.jpg

Ingenious design, you can run the ribbon forward, then by pressing the whole gear and it's associated shaft to the right, a different set of transmission gears engages and now you can rewind the ribbon. Beautiful engineering. Discovered this by accident as I had no idea how any of this worked previously.

pg105.jpg.89d0c79167b9d20ee940abfd48bb1532.jpg

Edited by FLwatchguy73
Link to comment
Share on other sites

After a good soak in Evaporust. It may be difficult to tell, but the entirety of the rust is now gone. I can tell you if y you use it, it does loose strength over successive uses. My son soaked his Remington typewriter first, and it came out better, mine required a bit more labor. At any rate, the entire typewriter is ready for sanding and priming.

Below you can see after sanding and masking it's ready to be primed. I choose a sandable filler primer to hopefully even out some low spots, we'll see. The primer went on OK, (no pictures yet) but it hasn't cured all the way. I tried sanding a small piece and it just loaded up the sandpaper rather than turning to dust. One last observation, the original paint is an iron oxide base, black paint or lacquer. I know this because the dust from sanding it looked just like rust, I googled it and sure enough, it was the standard finish of the day.

20200718_184120.thumb.jpg.9a0ea1f710c8b816262b106bd4fe68ca.jpg

20200718_184127.thumb.jpg.f06acebf463c4a499ea112311ae2cddf.jpg

20200718_184144.thumb.jpg.dea926a6d32f6bf5e7dad9f31748fc11.jpg

20200718_184152.thumb.jpg.fe04b44c5e8dcb97f5ee347237a006ca.jpg

Edited by FLwatchguy73
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wonderful. Watches, clocks, typewriters, calculators, pin balls, jukeboxes, sewing machines, I love them all and I love to watch people restoring and taking care of these. Fortunately I managed to control myself until now, but what will happen when I'll have lotsa of new more space?

BTW that lawn looks to be in stellar shape!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Early typewriters like that are just magic, good luck with the restoration.

My main other 'time stealer' is my 1970s Chicago Coin Hollywood Pinball machine.

When I bought it most people would of considered it just a parts machine, now many many many hours later it is now playable though it still has some twitches that need to be ironed out. I was lucky I placed an order for NOS parts out of Canada for it in March just before all international postage went crazy. It only arrived a week late and I've since discovered I could do with replacing a couple of more coils but they will need to wait until postage between USA or Canada and Australia returns to some level of sanity

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/11/2020 at 4:56 PM, FLwatchguy73 said:

Mechanically it's in shockingly sound condition.

In these times of wear and tear where we're brought up to be good consumers not expecting anything to last, we're flabbergasted to see something that was designed and built to last indefinitely. If we could go back to those days environmental problems would quickly become something of the past. Beautiful machine!

Edited by VWatchie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you. Here is today's update. Color coat of black acrylic lacquer has dried nicely. What a fantastic paint btw! Looks great. I unmasked everything and began the task of lubricating all the moving components. Letters, numbers, spacebar, tab, shift, all of it. I partially assembled the carriage and confirmed function. All is great!  I still have to source a drawband material, but I have a few ideas. Still a couple touch ups, but not overly concerned about them.

20200721_205544.thumb.jpg.6a56f88ecae1617c352524521ba0ecd9.jpg

20200721_205525.thumb.jpg.7130aa29805ebb24b30f11c7912ec8ed.jpg

20200721_205519.thumb.jpg.08fa525c02c5fcbb5e21eda98dbe7128.jpg

20200721_205411.thumb.jpg.f26fafaee50f6c1e7fd00cade1ceac9c.jpg

20200721_205353.thumb.jpg.b6dc320f0d77e69ecf4605ae57a4db94.jpg

20200721_205344.thumb.jpg.da9235371248bdfabc531d3d58f60534.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my youth as a typewriter Tecnician(Office machine Mechanic) we stripped these Underwood 5s down and had them stove enameled and re chromed , They were a simple mechanism and would work for years Nice little machines.. These machines along with Imperial 50s 55s, 60s were the staple of the Yorkshire Post reporters room. Many of the roving reporters used Imperial Good companion portables, another solid machine will give you years of pleasure and use

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Absolutely brilliant..........well done!

There are many things that I would like to continue to do as a hobby, but I just do not have the space.

However, I can get some pleasure from seeing what others' have achieved and admire their workmanship.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • That would be something! Which brings me back to;  
    • you think you're going to sleep tonight you're not, you're going to ponder the question of what makes you think those of the right parts?  
    • Does anyone knows what size case a need for a dial diameter 20.60mm?
    • Sounds like the story with my Rolex. Poor (expensive) job done by an official Rolex dealer with an "in-house" watchmaker, hence I learned watchrepair and did the servicing myself. Same story as I learned with the Omega 861, again poor job by an "in-house" watchmaker by an official Omega dealer. Once your watch goes through that back-door, you have no idea what is going to happening to it 🫣   Quite nice that they sent back the parts which had been replaced !
    • yes that's definitely not right at all. I have a picture one of my friends has a Omega coaxial there was having issues to lose asking me where he should send it. As that's a specialty watch I suggested the service center. When he got it back he sent me a picture so the replace the dial as you can see the hands the mainspring barrel and I think the price was really quite decent considering all the stuff they can replace. So I do know they do change the barrels but the other person I worked at the service center when I would ask questions and unfortunately I can't remember all the answers. I think a lot of the changing a parts is at the discretion of the watchmaker. Plus I don't know enough about the chronographs and whether that would be considered a vintage watch? I take some of the vintage watches may have been sent directly to Switzerland or another service center. Obviously with a watch like the one down below they probably have a infinite supply of parts is its relatively modern vintage stuff becomes more interesting even the watch companies don't have necessarily infinite supply of parts. But no matter what the watch shouldn't disintegrated six months that's definitely an issue.        
×
×
  • Create New...