I looked at the calendar today and good gravy, it’s almost St. Patrick’s Day! The wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’ – I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.
I recently brought home a wee leprechaun, a green Olympia SM4. It’s one of Moe’s. Per Moe: it is broken and not typing and could I fix it for her friend’s daughter?
I brought the Olympia home and sat it on the kitchen counter work bench.
This SM4 looks just like an Olympia SM3 – the difference is the tab setting and clearing keys on either side of the space bar:
Random question of the day: what happened to the Olympia SM6? Did it ever exist? If not, why did Olympia skip from SM5 to SM7? Is it sort of a Windows 9 situation?
Back to business. Here’s the broken typewriter that doesn’t type:
From the Wisdom of Blender:
If the typewriter types not, check ye the stencil setting.
Broken:
Fixed:
Its only other problem was that the tab “set” key next to the spacebar was depressed and nonfunctional.
I pondered this a bit and considered investigating around back to figure out why the tabbing mechanism wasn’t getting triggered. I thought the better of it since this wasn’t my typewriter and lack of tabs wasn’t going to impair its functionality in a deal-breaking way. I am sort of “Meh” on tabs anyway – to me they are not mission-critical. If I were typing spreadsheets, I’d be helpless without tabs, but this Olympia here will probably spend the rest of its life typing love letters and thank you notes.
I actually have a reference manual on hand: The Olympia SM 1,2,3,4,5, and 7 Typewriter Repair Bible.
This is holy writ compiled by Rev. T. Munk and recently published. He has a whole slew of repair manuals including The Manual Typewriter Repair Bible.
A couple of them have arrived at my house:
I’ve already gotten the Olympia manual all dirty.
These are spiral bound and lay flat while I am working. I like that.
They are a compilation of repair, adjustments, parts and tools manuals as well as odds and ends like this:
Maybe I should get an asbestos board for the kitchen counter.
I particularly love the manuals’ type and special characters sections. Here’s a pleasantly confusing mashup typeface I’d like to own:
I also want to find a typewriter with a Volkswagen symbol and horsepower symbol (who knew it looked just like the Hewlett-Packard’s logo?):
Spring has sprung. I took the wee green sprite out in the garden:
Though it doesn’t get very cold here in California, there is a definite change in the air here when spring hits. I found a beautiful old Irish poem about spring ( “errach”) from the Book of Leinster, and in honor of St. Paddy’s Day, the Olympia typed it out. My Middle Irish is a bit rusty, but I do like this translation.
I imagine that this is how someone in 12th century Ireland (or Buffalo) would experience the transition of winter to spring.
myoldtypewriter 