I’m back from California and a month-long visit with my new baby grandson. My report: he’s very perfect, and like many babies, he resembles Charles Laughton. Also, relative to his tiny body, he has enormous hands, and I foresee a career as a piano player or a typewriter mechanic.
stroking his chin in thought
As a gift to the brand new parents, I did night shift for the month while I was there. It was a gift to myself as well, spending time with this weird sleepless creature in the dead of night and contemplating him and life in general. What’s it all mean, Kid? He seems to have the wisdom of Baby Yoda.
After a month, I came home to Virginia in a blank-eyed, blasted Zen state and slept for three days straight. Restored, I then immediately went to Unique, an enormous thrift store that is the size of three Goodwills. It never has typewriters, but what do you know? There was an Underwood 21 with some kind of a Cyrillic character set.
I think I know which language uses this keyboard, but hit me up in the comments if you have an idea what it is.
Also at the thrift store, a nice made-in-Japan Kenmore 158 with a free arm:
So tempting, but I left both the sewing machine and the Underwood 21 at the thrift store, for I had another new Underwood at home.
Before I left for California, a generous member of the local typewriter community gifted me a 1938 Underwood 6. I brought it home and took it outside to clean it up. It really didn’t need much, just a dusting, blow-out, and dabs of mineral spirits here and there.
The guts were full of colorful little game pieces that didn’t seem to affect the functioning at all.
I removed the side panels and retrieved the game pieces.
I finished cleaning up this Underwood, so impressed by its solid, high-quality build. It has nice little details like the word “Champion” printed on the inside of the space bar. Yes, you are a champion, Number 6.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my 1950s Underwood portable, the De Luxe Quiet Tab. It looks swell, but it’s no Number 6.
After my return from California, I had a lot of correspondence to catch up on. I have been using the De Luxe Quiet Tab almost exclusively ever since I replaced the escapement’s broken loose dog with a 3D-printed one. The typeface is very nice (“Continental”), but more importantly, I wanted to stress test the 3D-printed dog and evaluate the durability of the PLA-printed part.
I was typing along last week, creating some typewriter art of a Bundt cake. Choosing blobby, amorphous subject matter rather than Notre Dame cathedral because of my below-average typewriter art skills, I pounded on the Underwood portable and had several very hard carriage returns in a row when *ZZZZZZING*—the carriage flew off to the left.
I will have to remove the carriage and pull the escapement to confirm, but in my heart I know I have a dead dog. R.I.P., little 3D-printed loose dog.
Fortunately for this Underwood portable, a package had arrived while I was out of town. It was from Canada’s own Brendan R.
The escapement plate’s arrival was beautifully timed. Brendan had a parts machine, a 1950s Underwood portable, with an intact, perfect-match loose dog. He was very kind to to pull it out (not a fun task) and mail it to me.
In a subsequent post, I will publish a step-by-step photo description of how I made the replacement for anyone nutty enough to want to remove the carriage from a 1950s Underwood portable.
I have been the grateful recipient of so much lately. I have gifted as well. While in California, I gave away a loft bed and mattress.
The young guy who picked it up brought his New Jersey dad who spotted my typewriters in the living room. The dad got excited and told me all about his typewriter in New Jersey and wanted to give me his IBM Selectric II. Unfortunately, it’s in New Jersey.
Speaking of Selectrics, my husband’s drummer gifted me a set of Selectric typeballs because she knew I was into typewriters. I don’t have a Selectric (and neither did the drummer). I may hold onto these in case one crosses my path, but maybe it would be better to gift them to someone with a Selectric and no typeballs.
So much good stuff—all freely given. I could make the argument that gifts hold society together—not in an even-steven or zero-sum way, but as a way to build connection between givers and receivers. I am so grateful for all the generous exchanges and good mojo in the typewriter community.
myoldtypewriter 
Congratulations on your visit with your grandson. I also have an Underwood 6 with the Champion keyboard. It’s probably the best typer in the collection. I’ve taken it to type-ins and get many comments on how much its action is like that of an electric; very easy to use. Hope yours is also.
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My Underwood 6’s performance blows me away. I was on the fence as to whether to keep or re-home it, but it’s just so good I may have to hold onto it for a little while. Even before I cleaned it and got all the junk out of its guts, it was typing great. Fantastic typewriter.
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Wow … a 3D-printed loose dog! Probably this essential part needs a very strong material. But this was still a worthy experiment.
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A more durable material than the brittle PLA I used would have been great. The PLA dog lasted about five sheets of typing and confirmed that I had the correct shape and dimensions – it was a fun and interesting experiment.
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Correct shape and dimensions is the thing – you’ve made the cad file, eventually someone will print it in metal and be very happy about your work (:
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Printing at the public library in PLA was free since it was such a tiny part. It was perfect for prototyping, but I plan to research metal 3D printing. I also want to research small parts welding because I think I could have durably welded a tip on the broken dog and shaped it – if I knew what I was doing.
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Glad to hear that your new grandchild is doing well and that you had a nice time with family in California 🙂 Sorry to hear about the demise of your 3-D printed loose escapement dog on your 1950’s Underwood, but that 1938 Underwood looks as strong as a tank! Take care and I’m looking forward to reading more of your adventures in the typosphere 🙂
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My next adventure will probably be that Olympia SG1 you’ve been threatening me with 🙂
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I have an Underwood No.5 that I am proud of, this No.6 reminds me a lot of it. I’m curious, have you ever had carriage issues when depressing the SHIFT key on any of your Underwoods, or ones you have fixed? Any suggestions on who I can reach out to regarding that?
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Several years ago, I had an Underwood 6 that had a detached piece of the shifting mechanism that interfered with carriage movement:
https://myoldtypewriter.com/2017/02/15/brick-house/
You may have a dangling detached piece or a bent or misshapen piece that drags only when the carriage rises to shift position.
I recommend that you join the Facebook Antique Typewriter Maintenance Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/typewritermaintenance/
It’s a members-only group, so you’ll need to request admission. Once in, you’ll find members of the group very friendly and helpful.
Good luck!
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That’s a Russian Cyrillic keyboard on the Underwood (Olivetti). Nice find!
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I think you’re right. For some reason, I was initially convinced that the keyboard was something more unusual like Bulgarian or Belarusian. I blame sleep deprivation. 🙂
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Those IBM golfball heads are from GP, a third-party maker. They fit IBM Selectrics (but not the late Selectric III 96-character model), the Remington 101 (IBM clone), Silver-Reed SR25CEII and Juki. GP also made a special test head for technicians.
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Thank you, Typewriter Man! I don’t know too much about typeball typewriters and I didn’t realize these GP heads could fit other brands besides IBM. Someday an old Selectric will land in my lap (I do love the styling of the Selectric I) and I will tinker happily.
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The story behind this is that Remington bought a licence from IBM to produce the outgoing model as the Remington SR101. Silver-Seiko in Japan bought a partial licence from IBM for some parts of the Silver-Reed 25CE11 including the keyboard and part of the carrier (I worked for Silver-Reed for a time in the 1980’s) and as for Juki (better known for sewing machines), they produced the simplest, lightest thing that would move a standard IBM golfball head. The Juki didn’t last long. No idea if they bought a licence but I’ll bet that they didn’t ! Nice to make contact with you again Mary 🙂
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You are a wealth of knowledge. Who would have thought Juki tried their hand (briefly) at typewriters? I see that there is only one Juki in the Typewriter Database:
https://typewriterdatabase.com/198x-juki-sierra-3400.14048.typewriter
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Not wanting to make it a golfball fest but……. The Juki Sierra on TWDB takes a ribbon cartridge that normally fits the IBM 71 (the poster didn’t know which cartridge his machine takes). I actually have a service manual for the Juki tucked away somewhere which is probably unique now !
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Good information. Since I am a member of Typewriter Database, I left the owner of the Juki Sierra a note about the ribbon cartridge it uses.
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