Ever wonder why you shouldn’t try to take apart a typewriter? Well, here’s what happened to me yesterday.

I decided that I am going to paint at least one of the LC Smith Super Speeds (because I now have six nearly identical machines) and maybe someone would like to have one that is a fun, bold new color.

I picked Rosalyn because she had the most rust inside and was unlikely to be in perfect working order again. Her decals were also very faded, but her keys are in good shape.

I started disassembly by removing the platen, which was easy because this model has two convenient levers holding it in place.

When taking something apart that you hope to put back together, please, please, please document your progress. I take pictures of a little scrap of paper next to each screw I remove, and store them in a pill box for safe keeping.

And when a big piece comes off, I take a picture of that too.

Usually, I remove the body panels to clean machines, which means that the functionality is still intact. But in this case, I was trying to remove the machine from the base so I could repaint that portion too. And that’s where it went all wrong.

When turning the machine over to see if I could unscrew it from the base, these two mystery parts fell out. I had obviously unscrewed them unknowingly and now I have no idea where to put them back. (Cue the sad music…)

It probably would have been salvageable at this point but I then got carried away and removed three or four more screws, which caused other parts to come off.

So after a few hours of destruction, I decided to stop digging myself into a hole. I put all the panels, parts, and pill boxes into a large tote, with what’s left of the body. When I’m feeling brave, I’ll spend a few more hours trying to put it back together.

LESSON LEARNED: When planning to repaint a typewriter, remove the body panels but don’t try to remove it from the base. Just paper and tape off the base and paint that as best you can. At least then you won’t wreck the functionality of the machine.