Out with the Old, In with the New: Olympia SM

J. is a local typewriter enthusiast who brings me problem typewriters from time to time. She doesn’t just admire her lovelies on a shelf, she works them hard, typing daily. Her Olympia SM3 below is beloved. Not only does it look truly scrumptious with that box-o-chocolates keyboard, it types like an Olympia—that is to say, like a mechanical dream.

This Olympia, however, has a problem. The carriage won’t move.

J. is a very resourceful gal and has figured out a work-around. She engages the caps lock to free the carriage and types in ALL CAPS. She loves this typewriter so much, she will type in ALL CAPS if need be.

When J. told me about this situation and her solution, I thought to myself: sounds like the notorious Olympia Bad Rubber Washer/Spacer/Bushing Problem.

So, let’s take a look. All four rubber washers that pad between the machine guts and the outer casing were mashed into disintegrating blobs of tarry goo. Once the rubber flattens, the machine guts sink and the carriage starts rubbing or grinding or stalling on the casing. Engaging caps lock raises the carriage and allows it to move freely. Unfortunately, few people other than J. will want to type in ALL CAPS.

It looks like someone added modern washers on the outside of the case when the inside rubber disintegrated and the screws got looser and looser.

Typospherians have documented this very common situation with Olympia SMs. It is a well known problem with a “One Weird Trick” solution. When I see this condition, I think about a ten-year-old blog post at clickthing which I am sure has helped many, many Olympia SM owners over the years.

http://clickthing.blogspot.com/2011/03/amazing-floating-olympia.html

Duane at Phoenix Typewriter has a good video that details the fix on Brownie’s twin sister:

Duane cuts his own spacers from rubber tubing and Richard Polt has used flat pieces of rubber. Me, I use rubber washers similar to these.

Though I had bought some rubber washers at the local hardware store, I decided to use the extra washers that I found on the exterior of the case. The washers are about 1/8″ thick and looked brand new. I am guesstimating that the outer diameter of these washers is about 1/2″ to 5/8″ and the inner diameter is 3/16″ to 1/4″.

The old washers, melted and compressed, glued the machine to its casing, so I had to pry the frame from the case with a screw driver and pick out the old rubber.

I took clickthing’s advice and swapped out the four rubber washers one at a time so that I didn’t need to futz with lining up the holes on all four washers and screws at the same time. Here is a new washer going in:

That looks very good—1/8″ or somewhat thicker seems to be a good size:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an Olympia SM sitting a bit too low, must be in want of new rubber washers.

I tested, and all was well. I was able to type in lowercase, and there was no carriage scraping or stalling on the casing.

Gosh, this Olympia is so nice. Why don’t I own an Olympia SM3/4 portable? They come to me, and I always let them go. I used to complain that the carriage shift was too heavy for my delicate lady paws. Heck, if J. can type in ALL CAPS for the love of an Olympia, I can suffer the occasional carriage shift. Therefore, be it resolved: the next Olympia SM3/4 I run across, I’m going to keep for a little while.

While I was working in the garage, I heard the sound of a siren. I opened the garage door and peeked out. The sound became a hot shriek. There’s something funny going on out there.

Calm down, Olympia. No need to shout. I fixed your washers!

Those are members of Brood X, an enormous group of periodical cicadas. Here in the eastern US, they crawl out of their holes every 17 years to eat, mate, and have babies—all while making an insane racket. They are numerous and noisy, but harmless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_X

The molted exoskeleton of the 17-year periodical cicada

Looking to get lucky

I’m actually happy to see them. I saw them last in 1987 and have been eagerly anticipating their 2021 arrival. Far from feeling like a biblical plague, they are a comforting reminder that ancient cycles continue despite global pandemics, human dumbassery, and whatnot.

After All

I am a 15-month cicada, slowly coming out of my shell now that I have gotten my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Like many around me, I’m crawling out of the pandemic hole and looking about hopefully. This summer, I’ll see many friends and family for the first time in a while. My son arrives from California next week for a long visit. I haven’t seen him in-person since Christmas 2019.

Walking around the neighborhood, I see a lot of masks on the ground, a trashy human version of molted cicada husks. I have been taking pictures of them because I don’t want to forget what the last year has been like. We humans are so flighty and forgetful. I don’t want this experience to fade into the mists of time with nothing learned.

Southern States

This past fall, our family landed south of the Mason-Dixon line in the Old Dominion, the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia (hey, I think I can go to Herman’s this year!) Typewriter-wise, I brought my little portables with me and left the big standards in California. I will be back and forth between east and west for the time being.

It’s been a while – a helluva year. My daily WTF meter broke just six months into 2017 because of overuse. The constant churn of events exhausted the poor thing and several of the gear teeth wore down and just broke off. I am debating whether I should take it apart and fix it. Do I really even need one? In any case, I checked out of the internet and the typosphere for a while. Like Francis Weed, I have taken up woodworking as distraction and therapy.

New on the shelf

The eagle has landed: classing up the new Virginia neighborhood with a debris box and a rat-branded moving container.

End of an Era

Back in California, Moe from Mozo’s Antique Search and Rescue closed down her San Mateo location and sold her building.

I get a bit choked up about it , remembering the good old days of Moe and Roia and all the fun typewriters:

I wish I had that wrestlers poster

Before she left, Moe gave me this wonderful print which is currently hanging my bathroom in Virginia:

This is a picture of the Underwood exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) which was held in San Francisco. The exhibit featured a 14-ton functional Underwood 5 typewriter. ETCetera – Journal of the Early Typewriter Collectors’ Association had a good article in its Spring 2018 issue by Peter Weil about typewriters at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the PPIE.

In addition, the Shop at Flywheel Press closed its doors – I met so many beautiful typewriters there.

Like the passing of the elves from Middle Earth, it’s the end of an era.

Robust Update

The Olympia Robust has settled into her new gig at the Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia. She rotates into the Dachau exhibit in the role of camp typewriter. She was featured in the June 2017 issue of the Virginia Holocaust Museum Newsletter, De Malyene. The museum is a good place for the Robust right now.

Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in

After a year-long dry spell, I worked on three typewriters in the past week and found myself experiencing the pleasant, familiar sense of rightness and orderliness that typewriter cleaning brings me.

I was in Portland, OR last week doing family stuff. My sister showed up in town with a 1953 Remington Quiet-Riter that she had found in an antique shop in Columbia, TN. She wanted to get it typing and bring it to her neighborhood block party in Chicago this summer.

It was not typing – the typebars were gummed and rusted down. We got in trouble with my brother when he found us surreptitiously cleaning it on his kitchen floor, and we were banished to his garage workshop – which wasn’t a bad place for typewriter repair. It was stocked with solvents and a good radio tuned to KGON.

After a good internal cleaning and new ribbon, the Quiet-Riter was typing very nicely. The exterior is pocked with dots of rust, but it’s a happy typewriter on the inside.

I had to do some long-distance typewriter troubleshooting with my sister via text yesterday morning:

It turns out that her spools were not seated properly after she had fiddled with the ribbon – all fixed now.

I left Portland last week and headed to the SF Bay Area. I had burritos with another of my sisters in San Francisco and afterwards her daughter pulled out her non-functional typewriter. It had belonged to my niece’s grandfather.

What a weird Royal! This 1957 Royal Administrator was made in Mannheim, Germany. It is very similar to a Royal Diana except that it has a wide carriage.

The machine had been carefully stored (had the original case and dust cover), but the grease had congealed and stiffened and the Magic Margin, carriage, and typebars were not moving much. I took the typewriter home to San Mateo and cleaned the internal mechanics with mineral spirits.

Once it was clean, I enjoyed its crisp, precise typing. It was pretty clanky sounding – perhaps the lack of insulation in the ribbon cover had something to do with the noise. The forward-tilting lid is very appealing.

More pictures of the Royal Administrator are at Typewriter Database.

After finishing with the Administrator, I pulled out another typewriter, a 1957 Olympia SM3, from my front closet:

I had picked this up at Goodwill at the end of last summer when I was dropping off a huge load of old clothes and household items.

How could I resist?

Though there is corrosion on the case, the typewriter itself is pristine. I imagine that someone received this Olympia as a birthday present, used it a couple times, and tucked it away in its case where it sat for 61 years. In addition to the user manual, the original German-language factory inspection report was still in the case:

These two 1957 West German typewriters are a nice pair:

Southern States

I am back in Virginia for the time being, enjoying the strange, wet, tropical summer and its attendant thunderstorms. The weather here is badass.

Here’s a pretty picture from Virginia to end my post. My son took it last summer in Richmond, VA near where the Olympia Robust currently resides.

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Oly Oly O!

The Shop at Flywheel Press has a beautiful wide carriage 1955 Olympia SM3 that has always fascinated me. A wonderful typewriter, it had extremely bad alignment issues, and I wondered: could I fix it? I had cleaned it previously but shied away from trying to adjust the alignment. On my last trip to The Shop, I noticed that its spacebar was intermittently unresponsive. I decided to bring the Olympia home and see if I could fix the alignment and the space bar.

Fortunately I had recently found Richard Polt’s “Tweaking Your Olympia SM” from the September 2011 issue of ETCetera, so I knew what to do about the space bar.

I flipped the machine on its back and using two pairs of needlenose pliers, “formed” the little “L” shaped piece, squeezing it to make a tighter angle. I tested. The spacebar was much more responsive.

So the next problem was the terrible alignment – as you can see, the upper and lowercase letters were misaligned and the lowercase descenders were faint:

I did some research first, and fortunately alignment fixes are well documented:

I saw the four adjustments screws (two on either side) that Ted Munk mentioned, but the lowercase adjustment screws were buried deep within the machine. I would definitely need to remove the cover plates to get at the lowercase adjustment screws.

I read through Tony Mindling’s fix and Rob Bowker’s post, and thought that maybe I didn’t need to remove the typewriter from its shell. Adjustment screws under the carriage at either end were easily accessible:

I took off the end plates on my wide carriage Olympia so that I could nudge the rails further apart after loosening the “Rob Bowker screw”. In theory, increasing the distance between the rails will cause the carriage to sit lower – and that will allow the slugs to hit the platen at the correct angle and that will result in better printed text. Right?

This is where is all gets a little foggy for me. I can’t remember exactly what I did and didn’t do. I kept getting interrupted in the middle of this project and lost track of my changes. I know I loosened the “Rob Bowker screw” and nudged the carriage rails further apart. I *think* I loosened the lowercase adjustment plate and slid it backwards and forwards and tested various positions.

In any case, the upper/lowercase alignment was still way out of kilter and the descenders were still very faded.

I decided to peel off the cover plates to see if I could access the lowercase adjustment screws.

It wasn’t bad – the ribbon cover pops right off and after removing the front and back plates, the typewriter lifted out of the main shell.

I found the lowercase adjustment screws directly under the ribbon spools. Fortunately I was able to get a ¼” wrench in the side to loosened the lock nuts on either side.

And then I experimented with tightening and loosening the adjustment screws. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Printed text was still misaligned and had faded descenders.

I went back to the carriage rails. Hmm. I loosened the lowercase(?) slide plate screws on each side and moved the plates forward so that they looked like Tony Mindling’s pictures.

They started like this:

And they ended up like this:

I tested. Finally.

The descenders were finally nice and dark. Alignment of upper and lowercase letters was still screwy, but this time the lowercase letters were too high.

I went back to the lowercase adjustment screws under the ribbon spools on both sides and gradually brought the lowercase letters into alignment.

It was time to put the Olympia back in its shell. I don’t like to leave typewriters dismantled, as I worry that I may forget how to put things back together. I take detailed photos in the dismantling process, but still, I like to move quickly while it’s all fresh.

The rubber bushing between the typewriter and the shell were disintegrating. It was a matter of time before they went completely and caused problems. Here’s a detailed post on bushing replacement from Clickthing.

When I returned the Olympia to its shell, I peeled out the gooey remnants and slipped in new rubber washers.

All the plates back on, I did a little test typing.

What the #$@&%*! ??? What happened to my uppercase alignment???

I put the typewriter in shift-lock and tested typing – and it got stuck in shifted position. I couldn’t unlock shifting. I flipped the machine over and found the culprit. My brand new bushing on the front left was blocking the shift and shift lock levers:

I carefully sawed off the interfering rubber edge – the shift levers were free. I did some testing:

Not perfectly perfect, but so much better than it was before.

In conclusion: I have nicely aligned text that is uniformly dark. I am still not quite sure how I got to this point, but I never would have been able to do this without helpful typospherian blogs. If I have incorrectly identified adjustment areas, let me know.

As I am a child of the Pacific Northwest, Olympia typewriters always remind me of Olympia Beer, made with the naturally pure artesian brewing water of Tumwater, Washington.

Olympia Beer had a nice jingle back in the day that went something like this:

This is possibly one of the gentlest and sweetest beer commercials ever made. Why don’t they make beer commercials like this anymore? Bonus: it features Teri Garr:

I can’t resist sharing another beer commercial from my childhood – this one made by Olympia’s Northwest competitor, Rainier. It features the soundtrack of my soggy Oregonian upbringing: windshield wipers.

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myoldtypewriter

The pleasures of a bunch of old typewriters

Olympia SM3

Out with the Old, In with the New: Olympia SM

After All

Southern States

End of an Era

Robust Update

Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in

Southern States

Oly Oly O!