A staggering 98% of typewriters survive on ribbons. The other 2% use ink-rollers, or a variation of the stamp-pad.

Depending on how lucky or resourceful you are, finding ribbons for your typewriter is not very difficult. You might be as lucky as I am, to find them at your local shop in town, brand-new, in the box. Or you may have to buy them online (eBay sells dozens of them, you can take your pick!).

But supposing…supposing that you can’t buy your ribbons locally and support a neighbourhood business? Perhaps you cannot buy the ribbons online for whatever number of reasons?

How do you make your ribbon last for as long as possible?

Typewriter Features

The typewriter itself should be able to help you.

Most typewriters have what’s called a “bichrome ribbon switch”. It’s a switch that moves from left to right (or up and down, as the case may be) on the side of your machine. Can’t find it? Look for two, or three coloured dots or squares. Typically, red, blue and white (or red, black and white, again, as the case may be).

The ribbon-selector determines which half of the 1/2in.-wide ribbon, the typebars will strike when you use your machine, either the top 1/4in, or bottom 1/4in., of the ribbon.

Simply type until the ribbon is finished. Take it out, reverse it, slot it into the machine again and resume typing on the unused half of the ribbon.

You can also use the “Ribbon Reverser”. Combined with the ribbon-switch (not all machines have both functions, some do, some don’t. Mine does), it’s possible to run the ribbon back and forth through the machine in opposite directions without even taking it out of the machine to flip it over!

Doing this, you can make one ribbon last for up to four passages through the typewriter.

Re-Inking a Ribbon

It is possible to re-ink a ribbon, if you so desire (or are unable to purchase a new ribbon).

To do so, you will require the following:

1). A dried, used typewriter ribbon, all wound onto one spool.

The ribbon must be in good condition. Either a freshly-used one, or an old used one that is structurally sound. It’s no good using a ribbon that’s frayed, ripped, trashed or otherwise nonfunctional.

2). A small plate.

This is to catch any dripping ink. Don’t worry! It’s washable. Your China won’t be permanently stained…

3). Tissues.

Just in case!

4). A bottle of stamp-pad ink.

Any stationery chain worth its salt will sell little bottles of stamp-pad ink (typically, 50ml sizes). Purchase one or two bottles of the ink of your choice (red, black, blue, etc).

Got all those things? Let’s begin.

How to Re-Ink your Ribbon

Why are we using stamp-pad ink? Why not fountain pen ink?

Let me explain. The ink in a typewriter ribbon must remain wet and usable for a long period of time. If it dried out overnight, you’d be left with yards of really pretty black ribbon…and nothing else. Completely useless.

Guess what? Stamp pads must also remain wet and usable for a long period of time, otherwise you can’t press rubber stamps into it!

Beginning to see the similarities here?

Good!

Because stamp-pad ink shares the same properties as typewriter ink, it’s a perfect re-inking tool for spent ribbons. Apply the ink in the following manner:

Having ensured that the ribbon is rolled up onto one spool (but that the tail is still attached to the other!), open the bottle of stamp-ink. The mouth of the bottle should be a small slit, like this: –

If it was a regular bottle-opening, the ink would just come rushing out and you’d have a huge mess on your hands.

Holding the ribbon-spool in one hand and the bottle in the other, press the mouth of the bottle to the ribbon and GENTLY squeeze the bottle to encourage the ink onto the ribbon. In most cases, gravity alone will cause the ink to dribble out.

As the ink dribbles out, use the tip of the bottle to spread it evenly along the whole 1/2in. width of the ribbon. Do one section, then rotate the spool, and do another section, then rotate, do another section, and so-forth, until all 360 degrees of the ribbon have been inked in this manner.

DO NOT OVERDO IT! One drop of ink has to seep right through the ribbon to the bottom of the spool. Use the ink as sparingly as possible. No more than two drops for each section, spread out along the ribbon. anymore than that, and the ribbon will be too heavily saturated to be of any practical use.

It is NOT necessary to unroll the entire ribbon and do every single inch of it. Simply roll it up and drip and spread ink onto it as I described. The ink will seep through the layers of ribbon, saturating the entire length of the ribbon until the whole thing has been re-inked. Fast, easy, a bit messy, but over and done with in 5 minutes.

Once the ribbon has been re-inked, set it back into the typewriter and position it for use. You’re done!

I recently purchased an Underwood Standard Portable four-bank mechanical typewriter, from the mid-1920s. It’s a beautiful machine…

Ain’t it purdy?

…which is everything a classic, vintage typewriter ought to be. White glass keys, black steel body, a delightful little bell at the back which goes ‘Ding!’ and all the rest of it. But it frustrated me that the typewriter’s KEYS would stick and jam constantly.

Now in all fairness, I purchased this machine KNOWING that the keys would stick. But I was prepared to take the risk and buy it anyway. I might not get another chance to find a nice machine like this. But having bought it, I needed to get the keys working.

Do you have an old mechanical typewriter like this, with sticking keys? This is what you do to clean them up and stop them from jamming and sticking…

You Will Need…

1). Bottle of METHYLATED SPIRITS. Preferably a large one.

N.B.: Methylated Spirits is called different things in different places. In America, it’s ‘Denatured Alcohol’.

2). A soft brush. Like a small paintbrush. Not a toothbrush, that’s too stiff.

3). A small bowl or cup. This is to decant the meths into, during cleaning.

4). A roll of paper-towels.

5). Patience. Care. Attentiveness.

Preparing the Machine

To start unjamming the sticking keys, you need to rip off about 3-4 sheets of paper-towel. Fold them up along the perforations so that you have a nice, thick square of paper. Lift up the machine and shove the paper underneath. If your typewriter is an open-bottom machine like mine, that’s all you have to do.

If it’s a closed-bottom machine (for example, the Royal No. 10 desktop typewriter), then you must remove the bottom first (just unscrew it).

Having placed the wadding of paper underneath, fill your little bowl or cup, with meths. Fill it UP. You might be here for a long time.

Remove the ribbon from the typewriter. If you’re not already familiar with it, then double-check how the ribbon is installed into the machine FIRST, before you remove it.

Roll two or three sheets of regular A4 paper into the typewriter. This is to act as padding against the constant pounding of the keys against the platen and roller.

If your machine has one, open or take off the dust-cover that covers the type-basket.

You are now ready to start cleaning.

Cleaning the Type-Basket

Assuming that the machine is NOT damaged, and there are no bent hammers, broken linkages or other defects, but the machine’s keys still jam and stick, your next step is to clean the machine. Specifically, you want to focus on the type-basket. The type-basket is that big, smiley face in front of your keyboard.

A typewriter works in the following way:

You press on a key. The key depresses, and it pulls on a lever. That lever is attached to a typebar. When the lever drops, it pulls the typebar up with force, and the head of the bar strikes the ribbon, imprinting ink onto the paper. Releasing the key causes the typebar to gravity-drop back into place, resetting it for the next strike.

Jamming is caused by gunk and debris (dust, white-out crumbs, lint, etc) which gets into the fine, inaccessible areas of the typewriter-basket. This debris creates friction which stops the typebars from working naturally, through gravity and mechanical force, as they should.

This is what you’re trying to remove from the machine. It’s done in the following manner:

1). Dip your brush into the cup or bowl of methylated spirits. Remove it, and shake off any excess meths.

2). Brush the meths into the ends of the typebars, right at the back of the basket, into all the little grooves where the typebars attach to their key-levers. Brush from side to side, along the ‘smile’, and also, up and down in short strokes, to force the methylated spirits and the brush-bristles, between the grooves and gaps of the typebars.

3). Repeat this. Over. And over. And over. And over. Just keep brushing and probing, scrubbing, brushing, and probing and washing and flushing.

— — — —

What happens is that the methylated spirits dissolves the gunk stuck to the type-bars. It then just drips out of the bottom of the machine and collects on the paper-towels below. Any excess spirits just evaporates into the air, leaving a clean, and dry typing mechanism behind.

— — — —

Keep brushing and cleaning and flushing like this. Every few minutes, press the offending keys, along with all the others, to check for jamming, or improvement of function. This process can take a few minutes, or it can take days. If you want proof that the methylated spirits is cleaning your machine, then simply lift up the typewriter. You will have to change the paper-towels underneath the machine throughout the cleaning process, as they eventually become saturated with spirits and require replacing.

In removing the sheets of paper-towels, take note of their condition. A really dirty, jammed up machine will be dribbling oodles of black, grey dust and crud onto the paper, and you’ll be able to see it really really clearly. It’ll look almost like fireplace soot. This is the rubbish you’re trying to get out of your machine.

You must repeat this process until the paper removed from under the typewriter is COMPLETELY CLEAN and has NO debris on it AT ALL. This is the sign that it has all been flushed out and that the mechanism is cleaned and ready for proper use.

To give your typewriter a fighting chance, you might also want to clean under the machine at all the points where the typewriter-keys connect with the type-bars. Removing as much dust and crud as you can will ensure that the machine runs as best as possible. You can do this by brushing methylated spirits along the linkage-points, and then carefully wiping them clean with paper-towels or tissues. You may have to do this several times as well.

How long does it take to clean a typewriter? It really depends on its age, when it was last used, when it was last cleaned, how it’s been treated, its size and how thorough your cleaning is. It could take half an hour. It could take two hours. For me, I was cleaning it, on and off, for half a day, letting the meths soak through the machine to do its job, coming back, adding more, and changing the paper periodically to check the progress.

Important Note

As tempting as it may be, do NOT USE OIL on your TYPEWRITER. EVER.

As every person who repairs typewriters will probably tell you, and as all the period instruction-manuals (including my own) will also tell you, oil is a typewriter’s worst enemy. Do not use WD-40, olive-oil, melted butter, pig’s fat, sewing-machine oil or lard, in the hopes of getting your machine running.

Oil will lubricate the machine, yes. But it will also become a dust-trap as particles settle on the oil (which just sits there, it doesn’t evaporate and dry up) and create a disgusting sludge over time, that will…you guessed it…jam the machine. And you’re back to Square One.

Using meths is the ONLY way to clean your machine, as methylated spirits will just evaporate once the job is done, and leave no residue behind which dust can cling to.

If you MUST have lubricant (which is unlikely, as the whole machine should work on gravity alone), then make sure it is one that is non-greasy, and which does NOT attract dust. Otherwise, you’re in strife.

Is it Really That Easy?

Yes! Following this process, I successfully unjammed about a half-dozen keys in the typewriter that you see up above. It’s a messy, slow, sometimes frustrating method, but it does work. Otherwise I wouldn’t share it on my blog. Hopefully, it will work for you as well!

Happy typing!

Recently, I snatched a gem off the internet for a pretty penny. It’s no sparkling ring, but a diamond in the rough. A beautiful piece of mechanical art. What is it?

Here it is:

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, for your delectation and delight, is an Underwood Standard Portable typewriter. From what I’ve managed to find out, it dates to 1926 (Serial No. 4B220153. If anyone can be more accurate with the dating, it’s appreciated; leave a comment under the posting).

What’s with the Typewriter?

What? Don’t look at me like that…they’re cool…

I’ve always admired typewriters. I dunno why. I just do. I guess it’s because I learned to touch-type on a typewriter (albeit an electronic Canon TypeStar…look it up on Google Images and behold it in all its horrific 1980s glory)  and I liked the fact that I could see everything happening in front of me, being transferred in neat rows to a sheet of cloudy white paper.

I love mechanical typewriters. Partially for their style and elegance, their functionality, their durability, but also because they’re so much fun to use. To see everything happen mechanically as a pure extension of your hand.

About the Underwood and a Look at Portable Typewriters

Prior to the 1920s, typewriters were MASSIVE, heavy, bone-crushing monsters. Huge, solid steel typing machines that could weigh anywhere from 30-50 pounds. These typewriters were solid, dependable, and great…so long as you weren’t planning on going anywhere in a hurry.

The problem with desktop or ‘Office’ typewriters, as they were called, was that their huge bulk and massive weights (the lightest I’ve found is probably the Royal No. 10, which weighs in at about 30-odd pounds, and it goes UP from there!) is that they’re a real pain to carry around. But then, they’re not designed to be. They’re supposed to sit in your office and not move. That’s why they’re called office typewriters.

But there was a market out there for a portable typewriter. The problem was trying to find a way to make a portable typewriter so that it functioned practically.

The first ever portable typewriter was the Remington Portable, (yes, names back then were simple, plain, and to-the-point) which came out in 1921. Here it is:

The Remington Portable was considered a typing revolution. For the first time ever, you had a typewriter that you could carry around in a case, just like a briefcase! The Remington was lightweight (comparatively speaking), stylish, easy to use, and featured…most…of the features of a comparable desktop typewriter. Just as how Remington was the first company to mass-produce the modern typewriter back in the 1870s, in the 1920s, just fifty years later, it’s spearheading the design-race in getting the first portable typewriter onto the market.

At once, a typewriter-race was started. Other companies wanted to try and make portables too! And they would find fault with the Remington by pointing out that with THAT typewriter…you had to push the type-bar lever to raise the typebars up before you could type! An unnecessary, and wasteful one second! Other companies could do SO MUCH BETTER!!!

One of the companies that thought it could, was the Underwood Typewriter Co. Originally producing ribbons and paper for Remington, Underwood started making typewriters at the close of the Victorian era. Its most successful desktop model was the Underwood No. 5. An enormous machine (don’t believe me? Go find a picture) that could knock down a brick wall. Wanting to produce smaller, portable typewriters, Underwood introduced its three-bank typewriter in the 1920s.

The three-bank portable was cute and handy, but for portability, it sacrificed keys and features to make the machine small enough to fit into a briefcase. For example, there was no dedicated row for numbers. If you wanted that, you had to hit the shift-key and hit the corresponding top-row key to get a number out.

To try and rectify these shortcomings, in 1926, Underwood introduced the Underwood Standard Portable (now with new, improved, four-bank keyboard!).

At the same time, Remington introduced the Portable Model 2, which still relied on the type-bar raising lever to function properly, something that the new, four-bank Underwood portable didn’t need!

Guess which machine suddenly became wildly popular as a result?

The Underwood Portable of 1926 became one of the best-selling typewriters ever! It didn’t stop manufacture for twenty years (except for a brief period in the 1940s. Don’tcha know there’s a war on?). Other companies such as Smith-Corona and Royal also produced stylish portables, and Remington produced some sleek models in the 1930s, but the Underwood Portable remained popular because it was the first ‘complete’ portable typewriter that didn’t rely on little tricks, levers and gimmicks to do what a full-size machine could accomplish.

Intricacies of the Underwood

Despite its obvious benefits, the Underwood Standard Portable was much like a lot of vintage typewriters, in that it still made certain shortcuts here and there.

Just like every other typewriter of the period, there is no ‘1’ key. To type the digit, you press the uppercase ‘I’, or lowercase ‘l’.

Along with no ‘1’, there is also no ‘0’. A capital ‘O’ was considered sufficient for this purpose.

There is also no exclamation-mark; another thing unique to vintage machines. To type that, you hit the ‘, then backspace, and type a full-stop underneath. The two symbols combined, produce a ‘!’.

Similarly, there is no dollar-sign; ‘$’. To produce that, you type ‘S’, backspace over it, and type ‘I’ or ‘l’ over the top. The result is not as elegant, but it does work.

Shortcomings such as this were common to almost every typewriter up until the 1960s (a notable exception is the Imperial Model 50 from the 1920s, a desktop model with a full range of numerals on its keyboard, from 1-0). Where-ever shortcuts could be taken to reduce weight and size, without also impacting on quality and function, shortcuts would be taken!

One of the selling-points to me about this machine is that it has traditional, round glass-and-steel typewriter keys, a staple of pre-war mechanicals. After WWII, the design was considered antiquated and keys made of plastic became all the rage. But the old glass ones remain highly popular. But they are getting harder, and harder to find, on account of key-choppers who saw off old typewriter keys to use them in making steampunk computer-keyboards. They look vaguely interesting, but for every nice computer keyboard, there’s now a worthless, useless antique typewriter lying around somewhere. If keys must be taken, better that they be harvested from a typewriter that’s completely broken up and trashed, rather than from a working antique…like mine!

The machine features a ribbon-reverser, and adjustable right, and left margins, a carriage-release, and a left margin-clear switch (found that out purely by trial and error! Originally I thought it was a tabulation key!). It also has a TINY little switch on the left-hand side, which is the line-spacer, for Single, Double, and even Triple-Spacing! The ribbon-reverser, and the up-down ribbon-selector are two really nifty features. They allowed you to type in both red and black, and wind the ribbon onto either side of the machine. But if you’re using an all-black ribbon (as you can see in the photos), it allows you to get twice as much use out of the ribbon than you usually would, because you can type all the way along one direction, on the bottom half of the ribbon. Then all the way back, on the top half, simply by switching the ribbon-reverser, and ribbon-selector, to opposite sides of their respective settings. A real money-saver!

The typewriter also features, rather bizarrely, perhaps, a backspace key! No, it doesn’t delete letters from your paper…it’s used to reverse over your typed work to either cross it out (which in the day, was literally done by typing ‘X’ repeatedly over mistaken words), or to restrike letters that had come out faint on the paper during the first run past, and make them darker and more legible. This happens more often than you might think…

Finding Bits and Pieces

There is a resurgence in a lot of vintage things in recent years. Wet shaving, fountain pens, vintage clothing, sewing-machines, cars, instruments…and typewriters are no different.

One thing that holds people back from buying or using a typewriter is that they don’t know where to find typewriter ribbons.

There are still companies that manufacture old-style typewriter ribbons. One of them is the European pen-manufacturer, PELIKAN. Most typewriters (unless it’s a really weird one!) use a standard, 1/2-inch typewriter ribbon, that any place selling typewriter supplies WILL have.

Brands such as Underwood, Royal, Remington, Smith-Corona/L.C. Smith, Olympia, Olivetti, and so-forth, will generally all use 1/2-inch ribbons. Sometimes, you can be really lucky, and your local stationer’s shop will still stock them (or if they don’t, they can easily order them in for you). But you can also buy them online from typewriter repairers. They’re also extremely easy to find on eBay for just a few dollars each.

If the spools that the new ribbons come in do not fit into your typewriter, you can fix that simply by winding the fresh ribbon onto your existing spools and threading it through the ribbon-grooves on the typewriter. It’s a bit messy, but it works!

You should NOT use oil on typewriters. Not even really thin machine-oil, like for sewing-machines. This is because the lingering moisture of the oil will act as a dust-trap for any particles in the air. And dust will jam up the typewriter in ways that will anger and frustrate you.

Instead, you should use methylated spirits to flush out any gunk in the typewriter. The spirits will wash away (sometimes with encouragement from a brush, and gentle scrubbing) the gunk stuck to the typewriter keys, the typebars and so-forth, and then simply evaporate, leaving no residue that might cause problems later on.

Using a Typewriter

In this age of computers, iPads and text-messaging, using a typewriter to write is like using a horse and cart to go on a road-trip. It’s just so anachronistic!

But, that’s what makes it fun.

Typewriters have their place in modern society, and not just as pretty paperweights and conversation-pieces. They’re handy as the ULTIMATE laptop-computer. No power-cords, no electricity, no fading batteries, no viruses, nothing like that at all. All you need is paper, a fresh ribbon and you can literally type anywhere on earth, for as long as you have those two things. No laptop can boast of that, no matter how good its battery-life is.

Typewriters are handy for short jobs. Letters, one-off reports, lists, etc. It’s faster than writing, and you can just crank in the paper, type it out, crank out the paper and you’re done. No checking to see if the printer’s hooked up right, or if the paper’s aligned properly so that it doesn’t jam…and in our world of natural disasters, a typewriter is your best friend when the power goes out.

Here’s one last shot of the typewriter:

Why is it called ‘Atticus’?

It’s called ‘Atticus’ because in a stroke of sentimentality, I named it after Atticus Finch, the lawyer in Harper Lee’s famous novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird”. In ‘Mockingbird’, the character of the local newspaper reporter is named…’Mr. Underwood’.

That, and ‘Mockingbird’ is one of my favourite books.