Cue the Etta James: at last, my typewriter has come along. Thanks to help from friendly typospherians, this old green gal is typing. Check out my mad hunt-n-peck skillz:

I am very glad that I am not a touch typist because this three bank keyboard would really throw me for a loop.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve posted details: initially her carriage wasn’t advancing on typing. Thanks to a suggestion from Tyler of Words Are Winged, I tightened a hooked nut under the machine and suddenly her space bar became responsive and the carriage advanced as I hit the space bar.

The carriage still wasn’t advancing when regular keys were struck, so I posted a request for functional Oliver No. 9 photos on the Typewriter Talk forum.

I was beginning to appreciate the subtleties of the machine’s construction – the tightness of a single screw or nut can mean the difference between a functional machine and a dead one. Perhaps that sensitivity was amplified by residual rustiness or gumminess in my outwardly cleanish machine.  For the last couple weeks I have been playing whack-a-mole: making adjustments underneath and improving responsiveness of the keys but losing the space bar and vice versa – or losing responsiveness all together. It was all blind fumblings. I needed pictures.

A helpful member of the Typewriter Talk forum posted photos of his functional Oliver No. 9 and I used them as a guide for making adjustments under my machine. My typewriter began to wake up.

I found that my universal bar (area #7) wasn’t close enough to the type bar levers. My space lever nut (area #6) was too tight. I loosened my space lever nut a tiny bit, adjusted the position of the nut in loop of area #1 and adjusted the height of the spring board in area #2 (“Supplemental Spring”). At last. The key strikes began to trigger the escapement and the carriage advanced.

UPDATE: On the advice of Martin Rice (THE Martin Rice), I increased tension on the spring under the universal bar (area #4) by first loosening the wingnut and then by turning the flower nut to compress the spring. This improved reliability.

I doused everything in PB Blaster (underside guts, key levers, ribbon vibrator, escapement) and set it outside for the night. The next morning it was even better – a cleaner crisper response and more reliable escapement trip. My conclusion: my machine was out of adjustment and gummy /rusty and once those two things were corrected, it began to respond.

Gary Bothe’s restoration of an Oliver 2 is an amazing read.  Of special interest, is the section on calibration. In it, Gary Bothe describes a “delicate dance”:

“The activation of the ribbon transport and triggering of the escapement is a delicate dance involving two things, the adjustment of the “hook” connecting the universal bar to the space bar levers, and (on my machine) the setting of the two “mystery springs” arching up under the universal bar from below. These springs are evidently there to cushion the blow of the type bars as they reach the platen, and their adjustment serves as a form of “touch control.” The only time they are activated is when the universal bar contacts them at the end of a type stroke. I found that the machine feels rough and clattery when these springs are adjusted down until they are out of reach of the universal bar, but the touch gets excessively heavy and escapement becomes unreliable when they are too high and are adjusted too tightly. I ended up setting their height so that the universal bar encounters their resistance when the type slugs are about one centimeter above the platen, and then setting the tension (via the bridge screw on the bottom of the frame) to give the best feel. Of course, not having access to the wisdom of the original designers, my approach is strictly trial and error. I encourage you to play with these settings yourself and come to your own conclusions.”

– Gary Bothe, Restoration of an Oliver 2 – Calibration

I still need to make some adjustments to my Oliver. The escapement is still not 100% reliable: it will fail to trip here and there.

I have been watching Words Are Winged’s re-assembly of an Oliver with great interest. I would like to see how he calibrates his machine for best touch and reliability.

I am thinking about getting another Oliver to take apart and reassemble ala Words Are Winged.  I love how open, visible and accessible the parts of the Oliver are – perfect for a novice tinkerer like myself.

Here’s a little Etta James for your Monday:

My Oliver is a little miracle of Chicago engineering.  It has a very clever draw band and carriage set up that works like this: a small hook attaches to the end of the draw band / draw cord.  During routine carriage removal, this hook catches mid-machine on a little two-prong fork so that the draw cord doesn’t fly loose from the mainspring and cause the mainspring to lose tension.

I love being able to remove the Oliver carriage so easily – I’m able to brush out toast crumbs and candy wrappers easily from beneath the carriage. Many thanks to Martin Rice for his video on how to remove the Oliver carriage. Now that my Oliver’s carriage rails are de-rusted and lubricated with PB Blaster, the carriage slides easily along the rails and off.

My mainspring was fixed, and it was time to hook up the draw cord. First I had to address my Oliver’s missing draw cord hook.

Martin Rice has a good video that discusses the Oliver carriage draw cord hooks he’s made.

Tony Mindling has a close-up of a classy hook he fashioned from brass stock.

I started with a picture hanging hook like this:

It was lightweight enough for me to bend easily.

Below is the carriage draw cord hook I made from the picture hanging hook. It’s not pretty, very misshapen actually.  As my mother would have said, “That hook is from hunger!”

It works though.  It’s about 3/4″ in height – just tall enough to catch the carriage as it rolls by on the carriage rails.

I will probably make another one since this hook is a bit embarrassing; however, I was just so excited to watch the hook, the carriage and grabber fork all in action together that I eased up on my quality standards.

I made a drawband / carriage string / carriage return cord out of 80 lb fishing line I had on hand from my previous drawband repair. For the Oliver, it’s about 13 inches long. It has a nice big knot at one end and a loop at the other

The loop went around my homemade hook. I will re-fashion my hook with a hole so that the cord is better secured to the hook, but this works for now. It looks bad, I know.

Then it was time to reattach the draw cord to the Oliver’s mainspring. The idea behind carriage advancement while typing is that wound tension from the mainspring pulls the carriage along from right to left via the draw cord. So: when you reattach the draw cord you have to maintain good tension on the mainspring at all times

First I wound my spring barrel carefully 3.5 turns counter-clockwise,

Hand model winds the spring counter-clockwise

I then poked the end with the big knot into the hole with slot in the side of the spring barrel, being careful not to lose tension.

I used tweezers to poke the knot into the hole and pulled it to the right so that it caught in the slot next to the hole.

I then wound the fishing line counter-clockwise onto the barrel being careful not to lose tension on the spring inside.

I then passed the fishing line through the little pigtail on the two-pronged grabber fork and secured the hook to the fork in the center of the machine.

Here I come with the hook, Little Two-Prong Fork.

Here it is secured to the fork and pigtail:

Through the pigtail and hooked onto the fork

Remember: you have to maintain 3.5 rotation tension on the spring at all times and keep your cord at the level of the spring barrel; otherwise, it will slip and unwind.

Let’s try it out.  Here comes the carriage flying down the rails:

The hook catches the carriage for a ride on the rails.  You can see the serial number in the foreground.

Perfect height! The hook catches onto the carriage as it rolls by down the rails.

The end of the line

Made it to the end and holding up fine. I really admire the Oliver’s cleverly simple system.

This reminds me of a train riding down the rails and picking up mail:

Spring is sprung.

The mainspring on our new Oliver No. 9 was broken.  This is (unfortunately) the least of her problems.

How did I know her mainspring was broken? Because when I tried to wind the mainspring, it just gave a sad little snapping sigh and lost tension.

Thanks to a great post by Tony Mindling documenting his repair of an Oliver No. 9 mainspring, I knew all was not lost.

One thing that makes a mainspring repair on my Oliver doable is accessibility. The little spring barrel is sitting right out there on the back of the machine. The mainspring on my Remington Rand KMC was tucked into its inner recesses. I am glad that I didn’t have to fix that one.

Tony had mentioned in his post that I need to remove the back carriage rail to remove the main spring.  Fortunately I had a rusty little wrench that took care of the bolts that held the rear carriage rail. I had to treat the bolts with PB Blaster as they were frozen and rusty – like just about everything else on the machine.

The rear carriage rail bolts were hard to access as they were under the rail – good thing I had that little wrench.

Back carriage rail is off – just need to remove the center screw on the spring barrel

Hand model pops off the spring barrel

From what I’ve been reading, you have to be very careful operating on the mainspring as the very sharp spring may leap out and injure you. I opened up the spring barrel VERY slowly and found what I thought would be there: a broken mainspring.

Ok – I just need to re-attach the end of the spring to the slot in the center spindle.  First, I wanted to replicate the broken end which was straight for the slot and with a little curve at the end.  I started fiddling around with needle nose pliers and a screwdriver and then – ZIIIIING – all heck broke loose as the spring escaped from the case.

Fortunately, I wasn’t injured – that spring is very sharp. I carefully rewound it back into its case and it managed to get tangled and twistedin on itself like a crazy Slinky. I had to unwind it and rewind it a couple times. It did NOT want to go back to its case. I bent it to my will with a steady stream of curse words.

I am being a bit melodramatic – it really wasn’t that bad.  It just would have been easier and safer if the spring had stayed in the spring barrel.

I placed the barrel back onto the machine, feeding the flattened end of the spring into the slot on the  spindle. I screwed everything back together and tested the  spring. It wound beautifully and then – SNAP – I had a broken mainspring again.

Sighing, I unscrewed everything and opened the spring barrel. Yup, snapped.

And then I thought about it. Which way am I supposed wind the mainspring? I had wound it clockwise. Could I have stressed the spring to the breaking point by winding the wrong way? Why, yes I could.

I went to YouTube to check out Martin Rice’s video on Oliver draw band repair. And he wound his mainspring counter-clockwise. OK then.

I carefully replaced the mainspring, inserting the flattened end into the center spindle slot.

I put the lid back on, wound it carefully COUNTER-CLOCKWISE. It worked beautifully. *ZZZZZIP* Lots of life in it and no breaking. It sounds beautiful, full of life and power. I live for these small victories.