Typewriter repair and servicing: cleaning, levers, carriage

I repair mechanical typewriters and bring them back into daily use rather than onto a shelf. Every machine starts with an inspection in front of its owner: I run the carriage end to end, test the line return and the bell, and type a full test page so we can both see which letters strike weakly, which ones sit off the baseline and how far the spacing has drifted. Only then do I name the work and the price. If the machine is a rare one with parts already missing, I say so at that first meeting: such parts sometimes have to be made from scratch, and that stretches the turnaround.

The main part of the job is stripping and cleaning. Decades of old oil turn into varnish: type bars stick in the segment, keys stay down, and paper dust packs the slots until the whole action feels like porridge. I wash the mechanism, straighten bent type bars and realign the slugs on a gauge, even out the touch so the entire alphabet lands with the same weight, and rebuild the carriage, the line return and the line spacing. Solvents are used with the windows open and with gloves on, because they are hard on hands and harder still on old paint.

The platen deserves a warning of its own. Old rubber goes hard and cracks, and I will not soften it with any liquid: a platen treated that way chews the paper and flattens the type faces. It gets recovered with fresh rubber together with the feed rollers, and only after that do I set the machine up for the exact paper you intend to type on.

What the service includes:
— intake, inspection and a test page before and after;
— full strip, wash and re-lubrication of the mechanism;
— straightening of type bars and slugs, touch regulation;
— carriage, line return and line-spacing repair;
— new ribbon on sound spools, ink chosen for your kind of work;
— fresh rubber on the platen and feed rollers;
— shell cleaned and chips touched in without erasing the machine's age;
— a stated turnaround and a warranty on the work done.