Today is my birthday, so naturally I chose to work on this 103-year old treasure while wearing a tiara. Actually I wore the tiara all day: to the library, to a yard sale where I found an awesome vintage atlas, to my besties house to borrow an egg for my birthday brownies, and to the local antique store.

The local antique store owner asked me to fix and clean this machine. It had a broken main spring, no draw band, and was filthy.

Here are some before pictures:

I began by repairing the main spring and replacing the draw band. (Extra-special thanks to Phoenix Typewriter for making a YouTube video of doing this exact repair!!)

With my remaining time, I did a quick cleaning, taking great care to avoid the extra-fragile decals. I ran a ribbon through it long enough to make sure it was working properly and create a type sample. It will need a set of original spool centers but otherwise it’s ready for another hundred years of typing!

Stay tuned for more tales from the repair shop!