czwartek, 13 czerwca 2019

Americano

And again... my first american typewriter ;)
I did some cleaning - to my suprise typewriter is in nearly mint condition. It still have factory oil on the carriage and cover rails.
It's also a very complicated typewriter to dismount the covers... It took a lot of unscrewing and planning :)
It is different than Olympias or Olivettis that I had pleasure to work on. The philosophy of engineers behind made it like nothing else around :) I like the design - it is in common to last line of Hermes 3000, the past 1970 ones (I value it the most from the 3000 series...). It's like took from some classic Sci-Fi movie.
So... for some time it will be my "english" typer - for correspondency, maybe some stories ;) Time will tell.

środa, 12 czerwca 2019

It arrived...

I'll probably type some reviev after I finish at least one of it ;) It travelled to me from US, past London, Warsaw and up to my little city ;) It took over a week.

Hope all will enjoy my commision to the CHT project in Paradigm Shifts!

piątek, 7 czerwca 2019

SG-3


I came across something special again ;)

During the search of the auction site one typewriter caught my eye…


Olympia model SG3 with unique QWERTY keyboard and with “ ‘ “ key!
Not only newer did QWERTY typewriters was produced with polish specials, but also none of original layout (PRL approved) had this special mark - one single character making typewriter multilanguage (my theory: it was made for purpose).


I pointed out this facts before on my blog, so you can imagine how shocked i was :)


I written to the seller and asked about the details… how it works, what is the condition etc.
And he claimed, that this specific typewriter was his friends, who worked in Vatican for almost entire life.
Well… that was some explanation - such typewriter would never be made for Polish market i believe… but for Vatican was entirely different matter.


I catched the bait… And had it after two-three weeks: I was searching for somebody to deliver it to me - it was too big to send it by post and not to risk any damage.


Well… It doesn’t work yet. I cleaned it and there is some problem with space-bar - it blocks the carriage. Without the shell it work perfect, but when I assembly it after cleaning the problem rise again. I’ll look to it - It’s probably some adjustments in the mechanism.



Anyway… I also figured out, that this is not original made keyboard.
I mentioned craftsmen, who modded foreign typewriters for private owners during the soviet regime in Poland. This is one of it… Altrought very well made!


This is one modded example:


Mine looks almost as original… There is slight difference in the polish specials on the keyboard (they are little brighter) and that’s it.
I figured out, cuz I couldn’t clean the hammers properly… The polish specials were welded in the place of old one - probably spanish.
Original hammer
Welded hammer


The seller don’t want to tell me the owner name… I’m making some investigation around the topic, and hopefully I’ll announce some additional info about history of this model soon :)