Sugru for feedrollers.

I’ve been putting off having a go at replacing the feedrollers on my Remington Portable no. 1. It just seemed too ruddy difficult. But having a typewriter sitting there all dirty and non-functioning was starting to get to me. So yesterday, I got it out and started to clean it. The platen knob had already fallen to bits in my hands recently while looking at it and assessing its level of awkwarness. This was good, in a way, because it meant that I could now see how easy it was going to be to get the platen out.

Someone broke this many years ago and tried to fix it with some kind of rubbery glue. The screw holding the knob in place on the rod is bent. But it works.

The above was taken after the clean-up. This (below) is the way things were before the clean-up and during…

Top of cover comes off fairly easily. A right pain to get back on.

How does anyone manage to do this with a ribbon?!

This spring came loose and it took a while to get it back into place. What does it do? I dunno!

Mystery spring location in centre-ish of shot. It was superbly awkard.

With the platen out – pull rod out of left side after removing knob bits. The front feedrollers reveal their true state.

The unevenness is evident here. But they function.

The serial number is actually 40343. The numbers on the machine are damaged with the paint flaking off. But, silly me, the serial number was typed onto the guarantee inside the lid.

The method of getting the sugru onto the cleaned up metal feedrollers was not really a method. Sugru is extremely adhesive, so you can’t really roll it out and peel it off your clean flat surface. All I could do was make a worm, flatten it in my fingers, press it onto the feedroller while turning it, and watch out for the lasagna effect. Once it was on, I smoothed and rolled until there were no bits catching and it looked sort of ok. I had to keep on moving the carriage along to get a good spot to do each one. I also had the paper release in open position throughout. Left overnight to set, and in all left alone for over 12 hours before replacing the platen.

The good thing about this, is that it comes off (with a knife, carefully) if you want to re-do it or have real feedrollers done. I will be keeping an eye on this set of sugru feedrollers, for durability etc. For now, I am pretty pleased with the result. The back feedrollers are in need of something. They had bad flat spots which prevented them turning at all. I filed those down with an emery board, but they don’t seem to want to do much. I might just try doing one at a time with sugru, if the front ones hold up for the next year or so.

The lack of ‘Cylinder scale’ that also incorporates the paper fingers is a real pain. It would seem that it is crucial for easy paper feeding, otherwise you end up getting crumple under the line guage contraption. But apart from a wrestle to get the paper in without it ripping and crumpling, typing on this old machine is good fun. More work to be done though.

Much better than before!