“There’s so little to see and so much time!…Wait! STOP! Strike that! Reverse it! Thank you! Follow me…” 

– Willy Wonka. 

This machine is a marvel and a headache at the same time.

Since my last posting, I’ve glued the spacebar back together, and it’s holding fine:

Before…

…and after!

I replaced the paper-bales, somewhat inelegantly, with strips of rubber-band, cut and stuck to size. The way these things are constructed, I can’t actually use rubber tubing like I wanted to. The rollers are riveted on, not screwed. I can take them off the machine, but I can’t take the rollers out of their housings.

The next step was to remove the platen. What a damn nightmare.

To remove the platen, you take off both side top-plates (the decorative things at the top). Then you remove the right platen-knob. Then you remove the detent mechanism and carriage-release lever on the LEFT side of the platen. Then you unscrew the platen-shaft screws.

Add a bit of oil.

THEN you pull the whole rod out, from the left. Then, you push the paper-bales back, and fish the platen out.

Now you can remove the old rubber from the platen and the rollers.

Resurfacing the Feed Rollers

The Underwood No. 5 is possessed of TWO SETS of feed rollers. Front rollers and back rollers, held in place by the steel PAPER DEFLECTOR.

The paper-deflector clips into place on the typewriter. Just tug it up and slide it out. Once it’s removed, you can turn your attention to the feed-rollers.

The front rollers sit on a pair of forks inside the machine. Just lift them out and they’ll come out in one long rod.

Removing the rear feed rollers, or the back feed rollers, from an Underwood Standard No. 5 typewriter is a real lesson in patience, research, observation and lateral thinking.

Heed me now: There are NO INSTRUCTIONS AT ALL on how to do this ANYWHERE on the internet, and NO INSTRUCTIONS on how to do this in ANY of the antique typewriter manuals that I have read – not even Underwood’s official repair-manual from 1920, produced specifically for this machine.

THIS is how it is done…

To Remove the Rear Feed-Rollers on an Underwood No. 5 Standard Typewriter

1. RAISE the paper-release lever (on the RIGHT SIDE of the carriage).

2. The rear feed-rollers are CLAMPED between two sets of forks. One pair goes over the TOP of the roller-rod, one pair goes UNDERNEATH the roller-rod. How to remove them, you ask?

In this photograph, you can clearly see the two “claws” that lock onto the roller-bar, between the two feed-rollers (the two clumps that look like antique liquorice).

There are two of those sets. One on the left side, one on the right.

The claws that hold the rollers from the UNDERSIDE are tensioned on SPRINGS.

3. Once you have raised the paper-release lever, the upper claws will move. NOW, push DOWN on the lower, supporting claws (which are on springs and therefore, movable). This will allow you to wriggle the feed-rollers out, to replace the rubber.

To replace them, simply wriggle them back in again on both sides, and then drop the paper-release lever, to lock them back in place.

Resurfacing the Feed-Rollers

Having extracted the feed-rollers, it was then necessary to resurface them. As you see in that picture up there, they are in an atrocious state. A typewriter without functioning feed-rollers is like a car on blocks. It just don’t do what it’s supposed to.

Using a very sharp knife, I hacked off all the dead rubber on both sets of rollers. This was a very long, fiddly process. The rubber is probably as old as the typewriter.

Having removed the rubber, it was then necessary to resheath the rollers in fresh rubber.

To do this, I used HEAT-SHRINK TUBING.

Easily purchased at any hardware shop or electronics supplies shop.

Heat-shrink tubing is normally used for sheathing electrical cables and wires. But it’s excellent for this purpose. You cut off the length that you need, and then slide it over the rollers. Get a cigarette-lighter (or use a low setting on your gas stove), and watch the magic!

The heat causes the rubber/plastic tubing to shrink, and form TIGHTLY around the rollers. It’s a simple matter of doing this to each roller, until you have uniform thickness around each one.

I recommend using two different widths of tubing – a thinner one for the front rollers, and a wider one for the back rollers (which are significantly larger).

Behold:

Up the top, the crumbling, hardened, swollen rear feed-rollers. Below, the cleaned, and resurfaced front feed-rollers. Spot the incredible difference.

Once the rollers have been resheathed…

It’s time to put them back inside the typewriter…

The next step is to resheath, and replace the platen. To do this, I shall be using bicycle inner-tubing. For future reference, the diameter of the Underwood 5 platen with rubber sheathing is: 44.5mm. You can round that up or down as necessary.