It’s the little springs

An Underwood Universal I had the pleasure of dusting and investigating over the weekend

One dodgy and loose key

Culprit: missing spring

No matter how much I fiddled and twiddled I could not get the spring back into place. As it wasn’t my machine, and I had very limited time, I secured the spring to the return lever with a bit of fuse wire for future repair. I revitalised the ribbon with WD40 and typed out the details of two repair people I could confidently recommend. Then I made a quick type sample for the database.

The ribbon was super dry so I was surprised that it managed to come back to life even a little bit!

Lovely green shift lock key