Over the holidays, I sent DePiglio the Underwood 5 away to a nice farm in the country—er, I mean, to my brother-in-law’s office in Rhode Island.

In 2019, I had cleaned up the Underwood 5 and recovered the platen with heat shrink. I got it typing pretty well, but last year I decided to add a sixth layer of polyolefin heat shrink to the platen to tighten up the paper feed. Per the OAMI  specs for Underwood Nos. 5 & 6, the platen should be 1.75″ inches in diameter. DePiglio’s recovered platen was a bit shy of that.

Most typewriter enthusiasts agree that having J.J. Short recover your platen and feed rollers is the best option. However, since my typewriter shtick is junkers, there’s a good chance they’ll come to me with cracked platens and disintegrating feed rollers. I enjoy hands-on crafting, so I go with the fun, cheapo solution of layered heat shrink. I’ve been told that using heat shrink for platens is a terrible idea, but come at me, bro. I’ve been able to produce heat shrink platens with very good imprints. They are kinda hard (by durometer reading) but perfectly functional—and much better than a cracked platen.

To get back to my story: I decided to add another layer of heat shrink, so I had to remove the platen. Removing the platen from an Underwood 5 shouldn’t be too hard, right?  I had done it before—but how had I done it? I really had to think about that. I sifted through my brain, but the detailed memory was shrouded in the fog of war and the mists of time. I just couldn’t recall.

Carriage removal on an Underwood 5 is not too hard (see below for carriage removal photos from another Underwood 5 project), but removing the platen…hmmm.

I dug around the internet, and while there is lots of carriage removal info, there isn’t a lot of photo or video information on Underwood 5 platen removal.

I hadn’t done my usual photographic documentation when I had taken the platen out the first time. I paged through my nice spiral-bound copy of the  Manual Typewriter Repair Bible and remembered.  Oh yeah, it’s a little tricky.

I have now decided to thoroughly document this for posterity and my own sieve-like brain. Not only does my typewriter blog function as an exercise in creative journaling, it’s a mechanics notebook for me when memory fails.

How to Remove a Platen from an Underwood 5

So here are the full 1946 OAMI Service and Adjustment Manual instructions:

1. Remove Left Carriage End Cover Plate
OK, that’s pretty easy – just two little screws to remove and the plate pops off:

2. Loosen Right Hand Cylinder Shaft Knob Screws [2] and remove knob
Also, easy. No need to remove the screws completely, just loosen them and wiggle the right knob off, like this [note that I removed the right cover plate as well to access the knob screws more easily]:

3. Disconnect Detent Spring from Spring Post, permitting removal of Line Space Disengaging Cam
This is where it gets a little hairy. In the past, I have taken out the detent arm screw and all the little pieces involved fell out into my lap. Richard Polt has a post on Underwood 5 disassembly and the Line Space Disengaging Cam.

I believe that this is what is considered the “Spring Post” and the “Detent Spring”:

I used a pair of pliers to pop the spring out from under the post. Use caution. Messing with a brittle 102 year old spring may be dangerous to the spring’s well-being.

Wiggling out the “Line Space Disengaging Cam” is difficult because you have to push the detent arm toward the back of the machine to pry the disengaging cam out:

It’s very fiddly, and you may decide at this point to go off-script and remove the screw that holds the detent spring in place. Use caution if you choose to remove the detent spring screw: take lots of pictures beforehand if you do this because you will end up with a bunch of weird little pieces in your lap that you will have to put back together:

4. Loosen Cylinder Shaft Screws [2] on each end of Platen
Easy – just loosen, no need to completely remove the set screws

5. Holding Platen with right hand, draw out the Cylinder Shaft with the Left Hand Platen Knob, from the left.
You may need to rotate and wiggle the rod to slide it out.  I found it easier to pull the cylinder shaft out with the shift + lock engaged (if the carriage is on the machine) and the carriage release depressed.

6. Platen may be lifted up and out of Carriage Skeleton.
Yup.

So that’s it.

Lastly, here are some pretty pictures illustrating carriage removal on an Underwood 5. I took these while I was working on Modesto, an Underwood 5 rehab project.

My recommendation: use caution and leave carriages on typewriters if at all possible. Once the carriage comes off, the typewriter is at high risk of Parts in a Box Syndrome. Some carriages come off very easily (Oliver 9, Olivetti Lexikon 80, Fox 24, Rheinmetall KsT) but that doesn’t mean you have to take them off. I don’t want to encourage over-confident cowboying.

On a scale of 1-10 (1=easy-peasy and 10=impossible), I would rate Underwood 5 carriage removal a “3”. Taking it off is pretty easy, but you may have problems re-seating it.

How to Remove the Carriage from an Underwood 5

The first step is to disengage the draw band from the carriage stud and secure it to the draw band stud on the main frame.  I used a hook to do this.

The next step is to remove the front scale plate and slide it off to the left.  That’s the right carriage frame stop in my hand.

Then you lift the front of the carriage slightly…

…and slide the carriage off to the right. I don’t *think* there’s a break band on an Underwood 5, so carriage slides off to right.

Ta-da! The carriage is off:

And that’s it. Maybe don’t try this if you have a history of typewriter dismemberment and mysterious bodies in boxes buried in the garage.

Lastly, here’s some bonus content for the hungry eyes out there. I dug up a nine year-old clip of me as a newbie enthusiast removing a carriage from an Oliver 9: