I love a freebie. I try to curb my impulse to drag things home because there are just so many good things out there—for free. However, if the freebie is a dysfunctional typewriter, it’s hard to quash the impulse.

I heard this spring that Richard Polt was thinning his typewriter herd. He put a lot of typewriters from his collection up for sale and hosted a typewriter swap meet in May. Afterwards, he sent many of his parts machines off to TB Writers Plus in Dayton.

Local typospherians were circulating Richard’s list this spring, typewriters he had for sale or that he was giving away for free. No, I didn’t need to see the list. I didn’t want to be tempted by anything he had. Well, I peeked at the list anyway. In his freebies pile, he had this and of course I wanted it:

Local typospherians Monica and Stephen took a road trip to Ohio to pick up the typewriters that they had purchased from Richard. They graciously agreed to grab the little Consul for me while there.

They came over to my garage to drop off the Consul and show off their loot from Richard’s. They got a beautiful script VisOmatic from him which is a crazy fun machine and of course, Richard had had the most beautiful example of one:

I am going to try to do something with Monica and Stephen’s VisOmatic which was destroyed in the mail.

So after the typewriter drop-off,  Monica, Stephen, and another local repair enthusiast, Ross, quietly worked in my garage on our various typewriter projects: Monica replaced a drawstring on a Smith-Corona Silent Super, Ross did the same on a Royal, and Stephen cleaned up a comically dirty Underwood portable.

Our group likes to tinker, and we always have project machines. For folks in the DC area, we’re hosting a typewriter clinic repair event on Saturday, June 27, 2026. Click here for more details.

Monica and Stephen recently bought a set of vintage Schollhorn typewriter keyring pliers for keytop removal and replacement. They are generously sharing them in our repair group. The removal pliers had a disintegrating rubber bumper, so I 3D printed a replacement in PLA. On testing, we found Overture 95A TPU was too soft, but PLA worked great for the bumper. You can find the file for the stopper at Thingiverse.

I was very excited to jump into the Consul. My fingers were itching.

It is a 1969 Consul 232. According to Typewriter Database, you interpret a Consul serial number this way:

The first digit of serial number indicates the year of production (4 means 1964), followed by model number (2 or 3 digits), followed by the machine’s s/n of 6 digits

So: #9232545088 means that this is a 1969 Consul 232 with a serial number 545008.

I was concerned that I didn’t have a Consul 232 repair manual for reference, so I would have to plunge into this machine blind. Or sort of blind. I did have a comparison machine. A sister ship, if you will. I had a slightly older sister, a 1967 Consul 232.

Several years ago typospherian Mike B. gave me this adorable little Consul. A freebie. I made a paper mache ribbon cover since its cover was missing.

I guessed that the 1969 Consul from Richard had an escapement issue and generally speaking, I don’t go deep into typewriters unless I have a service manual at hand or some  video footage of repairs. I could not find a service manual for the Consul 232, but I had the next best thing: a completely functional comparison machine. Fortunately, Consuls are extremely simple, no-frills machines. Really, they are a dream to work on.

Consul 232 Escapement Problem

I think of typewriters with escapement problems like this Consul as “Right Arms”, as if the typewriter is riding a bicycle and flinging its right arm out to signal a right turn.

I’ve seen some Right Arms before.

If you’re lucky, the escapement problem is due to rust, corrosion, congealed grease, and the problem clears up with cleaning. If you’re unlucky, there’s a broken or bent part in the escapement that you will need to address.

So I took the bottom plate off and examined the escapement, comparing it to my functional 1967 Consul. The loose dog was not right at all. It wasn’t holding the escapement starwheel tooth like it should.

 

I took the cover plates off. It’s easy to strip the Consul 232, like peeling a banana. I ended up taking the carriage off both machines. Here are the steps I followed (remember, I have no service manual). Note: I didn’t find a stop screw on the carriage rail for either of my Consuls, so I didn’t need to remove that.

1. Take off the back cover plate of the carriage.
2. Remove the drawband and try to find a place to secure it. I couldn’t find a place and just let it go flying. This will come back to bite me in the a$$. Read on.
3. Pull the center center stop rearwards and roll the carriage off the rails.

I removed the carriages from the broken 232 as well as my functional 232 (sigh).

These are plastic bearing retainers on 1969 Consul 232 typewriter:

These are metal bearing retainers on 1967 Consul 232 typewriter:

I did more comparison with the escapements laid bare, but I was still no nearer to finding a root cause. Time to pull the escapement rockers. The escapement rocker from the nonfunctional 232 looks like it has experienced a very traumatic event. Ouch! The tip of the loose dog is very slightly chipped, but I didn’t think that was the real problem.

The real problem was the mangled spring that controls the bounce of the loose dog. No bounce in the dog with that bad spring.

I started straightening out the spring and *SNAP*—a piece broke off.

I began again on new length of the spring and carefully straightened out a portion of spring so that the dog could go boing-boing-boing.

I tested with my hands, simulating the pull of the mainspring on the escapement wheel pinion and it seemed like the escapement was tripping properly and the dog was holding fast to the escapement wheel tooth.

I put the carriage back on. I followed the procedure as on an Olympia SM, putting the star-shaped pinion at the very end of the rail and sliding the carriage in from the left:

When it came time to hook up my drawband, I found that the mainspring wouldn’t wind.

Mainspring repair

I swear I didn’t wind the mainspring the wrong way! But here I was with a defunct mainspring. Time to run to Duane’s channel:

I  removed the mainspring from the machine and pulled out my Dremel to grind off the tabs that held the mainspring case together.

I opened the case expecting to see a snapped mainspring. Instead I saw that the completely intact  spring had simply slipped out of the notch of the center spindle of the case. I re-positioned it and closed the case back up.

And once re-installed, it wound like nothing had happened. My theory: I think when I detached the drawstring, I let the mainspring go hog wild instead of in a controlled wind-down. In the uncontrolled unwinding, the spring inside slipped out of the center spindle notch. That’s my theory.

Around this time, my neighbor rolled a very interesting wheeled cart out to the curb for garbage pickup. My husband, who is usually pretty skeptical about my curb finds, agreed that it would be an excellent table for projects. He has his own wacky hobbies. The cart was very dirty and had ceramic moose coasters glued to the top, but it is PERFECT:

Moment of truth, I put the typewriter onto my new Moose Coaster table—and it types!

Yes. That’s just about fabulous. I’ll say it again: I would not have been able to do it without the older sister Consul 232.

Screeching Carriage

Everything worked fine except carriage return. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Whoa!  It turns out that I had cleaned the escapement to extreme squeakiness. Here it is with a little lubrication of the escapement with Tri-Flow—much better.

One-page Typewriter Checklist

I have a tendency to attack things in an unfocused manner. I’m developing a one-page typewriter checklist to run through when I think I am “done” with a typewriter. Many thanks to those who created other typewriter checklists like this one that I used for inspiration. I wanted to keep it to one page because I wanted to be able to glance at it and know what was outstanding on my list.

This little Consul turned out great. It’s going to another local typospherian who promised it a home if I could get it typing.

I flew cross-country last week (and boy, were my arms tired—Ba-dum tsh!). I met up with my siblings in Portland. Seven of the eight of us got together to have some chaotic, large-family fun for a few days.

My older siblings are sister ships and brother ships, my role models, my helpful comparison machines. It’s good to have those around when navigating the unknowns of life.