u/Suspicious-Diver-630

A decade ago I sold off the last of my typewriters, but this year I felt motivated to try out some new ones. The first one I bought was a Remington Travel-Riter, in the usual gray paint. A super-basic machine that doesn't even have a ribbon color selector. It types fine, but I found out that these were also available in a few different paint colors, so I kept my eyes open for one of those, and eventually came across this blue one, which has some unusual features.

This appears to be made on the same chassis as the Travel-Riter Deluxe, which is fairly unusual. The whole chassis is die-cast aluminum, whereas the regular Travel-Riter chassis is (usually) made of metal stampings (which is how my gray Travel-Riter is made). The serial number has a D suffix, which again suggests a "Deluxe" but other than the cast chassis, none of the Deluxe features are present. I guess what baffles me is that the standard and Deluxe Travel-Riter have different modes of construction in the first place. Surely creating the molds for the Deluxe had to be monumentally expensive, so why two essentially similar models didn't (normally) share the same chassis is beyond me. This particular one being made with the Deluxe chassis kind of drives home how odd it is that entirely different stamped metal chassis was developed.

These late-model Remingtons don't seem to have many fans, which is kind of surprising because the mid-century-modern styling is pretty cool, the build quality is excellent, and the typing action is nice and light. True, the keys are pretty small, but the same criticism can also be made against the Olivetti portables, which most people seem to love.

My gray Travel-Riter is an Elite typeface machine, and this blue one is Pica, so I actually have a pretty good representation of the model in just two examples. Same model, different chassis, different color, different typeface!

I recently acquired an antique Underwood Standard Portable Typewriter. In doing research on it, I found out that several famous writers used this model typewriter. Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, and Violet Evergarden. I was intrigued that an anime would feature an antique typewriter, and set to watching the series, and both movies. I don't watch much anime these days, but I really enjoyed the story. Occasionally it felt a little over the top, but the themes and message are good ones, and like the best anime, inspire the audience to do better. I kind of wish I had looked into it sooner.

And, for whatever it's worth, the typewriter is represented with surprising accuracy. I presume the studio had one on hand for reference, and weren't just looking at some photos.

Spent a night typing back and forth on the 99 year old 4 bank portable, and the 1960 Touch-master II.

The late-model Underwood desk machines are surely underrated. If you want a manual typewriter for actual use, these Touch-master machines should be near the top of the list. The 99 year old portable is pleasant, but it's from a different era and the design intent is different, so a direct comparison is of little use. Suffice it to say, it's louder and less ergonomic in use, but it's still a light and quick machine to type on. YMMV, of course, but I like it even more than the venerable Royal P.

The full size Underwoods have some clever bits of design, some of which, like the margin settings being on the front of the carriage, instead of around the back, deserved to be widely copied, given how much sense they make.

This is one of those machines that I've always wanted, but which, despite being pretty common, always eluded me. Price too high, or condition too low, price too high and condition too low, etc. etc. I even tried my luck on ebay, but the same issues still applied. Even bid on a real beater, only to see the bidding go well over $100 9__9

Well, I finally found one, an early version from 1916. Dusty, but overall quite nice, and in the carrying case (with the cleaning brush still clipped inside), for $99. Ten years ago I would've thought that price insane, but these days, it seems just a little less insane.

Action seemed a little jerky, but after lots of cleaning and a little oil in precise locations (don't worry, the user's manual actually points out which parts need oiling monthly, these earlier machines were designed with constant cleaning and lubrication in mind) it operates remarkably smoothly and with an incredibly light action. I'm really surprised how nice it types with almost no key pressure.

I also didn't realize when I bought it, that it has a non-standard character set... I don't know if that makes it any more valuable, but I'm honestly kind of annoyed to learn the standard machines had a an exclamation point and an asterisk, and I've got a "-" and a "°" on those keys instead, as well as a set of fractions. Looking at photos of other Corona 3s, I found no others with this character set. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

The mystery ebay typewriter showed up today, and indeed it is a Torpedo 15a. Unfortunately the paper tray, and the margin selectors attached to it, are missing. And I'm willing to bet finding replacements is impossible. It's a shame because the machine types with a wonderfully light and "snappy" action, and it's otherwise in good condition.

An oddity is that the keyboard is not the German one typically seen on these, it instead appears intended for Spanish writers, given the é and tilde accent. But maybe they all had these. No umlaut letters though, and QWERTY instead of QWERTZ. The case is one of those ones where the bottom sits nicely inside the overturned top to make a little desk (setting it on a chair or coffee table brings it up to just about a usable height for typing). The decal inside the case was for Kach Office Machines of Chicago.

I just won this typewriter on ebay. Description was super vague, and the photos showed no logos or company names, etc. on it. It looks nice to me, but I have no idea what it is.

Recently purchased this Underwood Touch-master II. It's the first typewriter I've had in over a decade (my last, a Corona Standard was sold off in 2016). I probably overpaid, given how dirty it was, but I thought the blue paint was really unusual. The catalogs say they were available in grey or blue, but after looking around online, I couldn't find any examples of this model in blue paint. And even this one only has a blue fascia, the rest is standard grey.

This machine was incredibly dusty inside and out. The bell didn't work, the S key was sticking, the ribbon lift was sticking, the descenders didn't print fully, etc. etc. etc. Shockingly the bell was the most time consuming thing to fix, since the striker is tucked in behind the margin-release mechanism, and it required partial disassembly, bending the striker a little, putting it back together, testing, taking it apart, bending a little more, ad nauseum. Finally it gives an audible ding.

The ribbon lift required a spring on the underside of the machine to be reconnected, luckily it has only come off on one end and wasn't missing completely. The S key required bending the strike bar a little to get it to return freely. The issue with the descenders was easily solved by adjusting the height of the platen (which is incredibly easy on this machine).

My lucky break was with the keys, which I initially thought were heavily oxidized, but turned out just to be dirty and were quickly scrubbed clean with soapy water. After cleaning up the joints in the linkages with solvent, it's actually a surprisingly nice and light action. This machine was used hard, so you feel a bit of slop in the key action, which I suspect was not there when new (this is my first Underwood, so I don't know what's "normal" for one of these), but it prints clean and evenly, and the design seems particularly intelligent. Setting the margins on the front of the machine, and the general design of the carriage seems both original and clever (albeit, Underwood had been doing things this way for decades by the time this model came out).

Just waiting for a new ribbon (currently using an ancient Okidata ribbon wound onto a Remington spool).