I bought some typewriter ribbons from AliExpress...

So... I bought 4 blue ribbons and some black/red... I tested only blue so far, but my concerns about B/R are a fact.
To be honest I searched for the cheapest... But also all of them look alike on the pictures so I don't think there is many different products out there.

 Probably there were some warings on the net/typoshpere already - but I didn't look any advice on that purchase. My bad. 

Pre-war twins...

Hermes Baby from 1938 and FK Mała - Baby made under license in pre-war Polish arms factory "Fabryka Karabinów" in Warsaw. 

There was only 1000 FK made before war break out.

Baby have unique Polish-german set of specjal keys and probably was used during the war in some way... IT has value of many lifes and could be used to make all kind of papers. 

TT: Lambda Ribbon after 3 years on the spools :)

OK, to be clear... It probably didn't go even full "round" on the spools during this time. I typed on this SM3 around two-three dozen pages only.
It was on display in my living room with out any cover in shady corner.
The fade effect is probably only caused by age and slowly drying of the ink.
 

Blind Prophets

 

Hermes Baby & leather case.

I've had an interesting find. On one local ad I discovered a Hermes Baby along with the leather case designed for it :) 

It looks interesting and more handy than standard metal cover.
Anyone heve one like these in the collection? :)
Anyone interesting in purchasing such lovely case?

TT: Typecleaner

 Typewriter Test: Type cleaner!

I've recently acquired a new gizmo to my typewriter Den. It's called typecleaner and it cleans the typeface/hammers from "ink".

This is some kind of modeline clay at least at the look and feel. The difference lay in the material: this one is sticky and firmly stays in shape.

 

 

Working with it is very simple, you simply press it firmly to the hammers/typeface many times over :) It might sound bad, but actually is quite fast. The clay stics to at least few hammers at the same time and "consumes" the ink wastes. Afer dozen seconds it looks like that:

 

 

 And here are the effects on a nearly mint typewriter that I used the very day (typeface was clean before the use):

 

Before

After

As You can see the effect is quite positive :) It's clean work, without use of any chem or brush, only our hands and magic clay ;) 

After the first test I used it on my Olympia SM3, that is used more frequently and wasn't cleaned for some time. The typeface was not only more dirty but also the ink had time to dry on the hammers.
So this is how it worked:

Before without flash.

Before, photo with flash.

After, photo with flash.

Typecleaner after the tests.

As you can see the effects wasn't so spectacular as with the clean typewriter, but the clay took a load of ink anyway. The small spaces in the narrows of typeface wasn't cleaned properly, but It's hard to blame the gizmo. It would be a good start for more detailed cleaning with brush ang chems :)

I think that for collectors, that use many machines ocassionaly it's a great idea. You can keep them clean without much effort. Also for somebody, who simply needs to have things tidy!

The Den - my den :)

 

In one of my favourite games of all time: classic Fallout 1 was location named The Den.
From few weeks I have my own space, just for typewriters and writing - and because it's placed half-underground in the basement level of my block... I named it like that ;) 

I also acquired Olympia SG-1... It's in worked-up state, but functional and probably the smoothest typewriter that I typed on. I have to admit, that there is something better than Olympia SM3 or Hermes 3000... If it only wasn't so big! At other hand - finally a typer that doesn't move while typing!

Right now I'm working on big project, so my maine forces are focused on writing. Hopefully I'll be able to put something here from time to time - I really like this blog. Maybe a writer workshop tips for anyone interested? ;) 

First tip: get big typewriter - they do the job.

P.s.: In my story published in Cold Hard Type project Vol.1 "Paradigm Shifts" the main scene was placed in the very basements that now I'm working in ;) 

P.s.2: I still have this SG-3 in the line... and Hermes 3000 PL with missing parts to finish... So many typewriters, so many pages to fill. The "Curse" of Abundance...