Mechanical alternative to watches, for occupying spare time

[FLwatchguy73]

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

 

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

Edited July 11, 2020 by FLwatchguy73

[nichod]

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!

[FLwatchguy73]

I still have a bit of room left, lol

[Stevelp]

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)

[FLwatchguy73]

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.

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.

Edited July 15, 2020 by FLwatchguy73

[FLwatchguy73]

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.

Edited July 19, 2020 by FLwatchguy73

[jdm]

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!

[FLwatchguy73]

1 hour ago, jdm said:

]BTW that lawn looks to be in stellar shape!

Thank you. it has been raining like mad here every afternoon since late march. 

[Tmuir]

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

[VWatchie]

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 July 22, 2020 by VWatchie

[FLwatchguy73]

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.

[watchweasol]

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

[HectorLooi]

I wonder, in a hundred years from now, what antiques will our grandchildren be restoring? Apple iphones? 

[VWatchie]

1 hour ago, HectorLooi said:

I wonder, in a hundred years from now, what antiques will our grandchildren be restoring? Apple iphones? 

I'd guess not as they are designed to be consumed... wear and tear...

[watchweasol]

HI   A Drawband can be made up of a flat bootlace  had to do it when we had not any in stock they worked well enough but we always changed them for the real thing later but they got you out of a hole.

[KarlvonKoln]

On 7/25/2020 at 8:40 AM, HectorLooi said:

I wonder, in a hundred years from now, what antiques will our grandchildren be restoring? Apple iphones? 

Old original B&W Gameboys, Tomagachi (sp?) dial phones maybe.

[Len33]

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.