black beauty

i really went to town cleaning up this assembly and that paper guide scale. it was so grimey and hardly readable. now it's all shiny.

i wish i could go under the glass to clean out the letter underneath but i'm a bit afraid of ruining them so i just buffed the tops and the metal rings.



go ahead and scroll way below to compare these to my earlier 'typecast' posts!

this chrome accent now sparkles. it had some kind of gunk from adhesive on it. used a Dremel power tool on it to make it come alive.



this top was had some tiny white paint dots on it, like some splatter you get when you paint your ceiling. i had trouble getting it off, it wouldn't scrape off, because of the crinkle finish. my solution was to use a black Sharpie to camouflage the spots. as you can see, that worked well.

there are a few more scuff marks that goes deeper in the crinkle finish. some even went to the metal. i can't do anything more about that short of repainting the entire thing which i don't really want to do. i am not aiming for perfection anyway, just clean. and i like that it shows it's history. but i did use the Sharpie also on the scuffs where the bare metal shows. that adds a bit more to the cleanness. compare it now to my previous post to see how it looked before.




Magic Margin is a feature first patented by Royal (according to something I read somewhere but forgot where). It was later copied by other typewriter manufacturers like Remington which Royal contested. incidentally, i will have a Remington Quiet-riter typewriter coming next week (yes!) that still has that feature. its successor, the Letter-riter, this feature was removed. Speculation is that this was because Royal won that dispute.

The Typewriter Database is here.

speaking of cases, i should be off to clean this Royal QDL's case. it's quite, well... almost a basketcase rather than a typewriter case, but it is utilitarian. and who knows, maybe it could come out well too. will post about it soon as i get to it.

my first EVER typewriter

oh yeah, did i mention gunk?

some scuffing and paint droplets on the top

grimey...

oh look, Touch Control...

love the metal ribbon spool

will be cleaning this to get crisper letters and open holes on the o's and e's

it was these metal keys that made me really want to take this home despite the non-working carriage... which i did repair anyway. yes, i repaired it myself. :-D

writer's envy

the first typecast

yes, it is not perfectly typed. the grammar's not perfect either. just like life, it's not always easy to go over and redo something you've already done. that is probably why i get a kick out of this.

hello digital world

the earth is flat.

i can now go all over the world in seconds, or minutes, depending on how fast my broadband connection is. i can be practically anywhere on earth, learn anything, and view anything within the confines of the smooth, 23-inch, diagonal span of my FLAT-screen computer monitor in an instant. yep, just like that.

that is how the earth has become flat. practically anything now is digital and easily accessible. not that i don't appreciate it because i do. really. however, since this is so, we have also become multitasking, impatient people who expect everything to happen in a snap. and when we can get from here to there so quickly, we lose some of the flavor somehow. just like instant coffee. oh, snap!

this is probably the reason why i find everything non-digital increasingly charming... alluring... irresistible... fascinating... satisfying. hence, i create yet another blog to express my thoughts, via words and more importantly, with images. not that anyone is interested. or, maybe someone WILL find it interesting just like how i occasionally go through someone else's blog and find tidbits of someone else's thoughts that jive with mine. it doesn't really matter. either way, i just want to say hello to the digital world and show how some things analog just simply make me happy.