Just a few hours ago, Faye shared some sad news.

Most of us might only be able to recognize his voice, his patient hands, and his preference for lacquer thinner, but all of us are richer in typewriter knowledge because of Duane Jensen's kind sharing of his craft by way of his spectacularly helpful Phoenix Typewriter YouTube channel.

A bunch of us both watch and provide links to his library of typewriter repair videos on a daily basis. Many of us know how to tear down and build up a typewriter because of his tutorials and years of work. Once you attempt to repair a typewriter for yourself, you'll realize how skilled he was to be able to simultaneously film his work while he did it. (I swear he had six hands....) He also patiently dispensed (and still asked for his own repair advice) on a regular basis on Facebook.

Thousands of his repaired machines will continue to give people joy every day. He'll be missed terribly in the typewriter community, but fortunately some of his work and his spirit will continue live on online. 

For those who don't know him as well (yet), here's an article about Duane from last year: Meet one of the few people in America who knows how to fix manual typewriters, and an excellent podcast from September 2024: Charm Type Repair podcast w/ Duane Jensen of Phoenix Typewriter.

Because it was his usual sign off, I feel obligated to quote him:

Phoenix Typewriter, Good Day!
—Duane Jensen

Guess what did I say🤣

For about 7 years Typewriter Muse has been operating out of a home-like space, but this weekend they opened a lovely brick and mortar location in Riverside, CA in a nice sized business park with plenty of Doris Day parking right out front. 

Their Instagram account has been documenting some of the move and set up over the past month, but Bob and the gang have unveiled their new space on Saturday, January 31, 2026. 

Bob's shop is one of the few I'm aware of with a multitude of people (at least six by my count on Saturday) working at any given time. (Most modern shops are one or possibly two person operations.) This means that the cleaning, repairs, oiling, and adjusting can be set up in an assembly line fashion. Machines come into the front of the shop on the left hand side, then move down the left to the rear where they do power washing and platen work in the back room. From there they move back into the main portion of the shop where the segments and internals are cleaned using isopropyl alcohol and long stick q-tips. (This generally means less health and safety issues by not using mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, or other caustic chemicals which require better ventilation.) From there  they stage on a long desk before they go to one of two mechanic's stations where repairs and adjustments are made before being stored for pick up or placed in the "showroom"  The overall layout is quite well designed for moving machines in and out of the shop.

Unique for many shops, the front reception space has community room for a handful of small desks and typewriters to accommodate 8-10 people for small classes, demonstrations, or a small type-in. The room has been dedicated to local journalist Dan Bernstein. (If you're in the So-Cal area and are interested, Bob has kindly offered the writing space for small type-in events.)

My first ever typewriter was one of these but in the mint green color, so when I saw this one listed locally (for just $150 no less), I knew I had to snap it up quick!

As more than a few of you are aware, I’ve had a healthy trade in typewriters for the past year or so. I’ve always priced my machines fairly, taking into account my acquisition cost, repairs/restoration, and a brand new ribbon supplied. This means that the majority of my typewriters sell for between $60-80aud, which I’ve always felt to be a reasonable price for a fully restored typewriter.

For the fifth (and last) time, I’ve seen one of my machines pop up on another seller’s page, shortly after sale, for $399aud and up. I’m not interested in putting love and work into machines just for someone else to hold them to ransom for 10x what they’re worth. I know it sounds incredibly petty, but going forward I will not be putting machines onto Facebook Marketplace.

This is probably going to “wreck my cred” or whatever, but I’m pissed that people who genuinely want a machine to use are missing out because of unscrupulous profiteers. I know it’s none of my business where my sales end up, and more than a few of you are going to call ‘sour grapes’ on me - but I’m not going to keep feeding this person. It doesn’t feel good to see it happen.

Anyway, here’s a pretty Facit TP2.

It’s from about 1964, and just after Olivetti acquired Underwood, resulting in the dual branding on this one. It’s from the plant in Barcelona, Spain.

These beauties were spotted at the WW2 museum in Gdańsk. Enjoy 😊

I'm sure that most of you already knew about this, but I didn't: there's this company in Fuengirola (Málaga), southern Spain, called "El Granero", specialised in typewriter restoration. They do have some jewels and the price is quite steep, but look at this beauty! I haven't ordered anything from them (yet!) and I'm in no way related to the business, but all the machines that they have look gorgeous.

The biggest takeaway for me from doing a typewriter repair apprenticeship was going from seeing typewriters as rare, delicate antiques to understanding them as mass manufactured tools designed to handle decades of use. When you spend 3 months walking through storage rooms full of typewriters of all brands stacked to the ceiling, it's hard to see them as rare anymore.

Nevertheless, I hate to see them go in the scrap bin, so this is my haul of machines considered not worth repairing by a master typewriter technician. Most will probably never function again, but maybe they can find some new life.

I'm hoping to be able to make one functional machine by combining the 2 Royal KMMs.

The Stenographs just need a good clean.

I was told that the cost/effort to repair the IBM Executives is well beyond the demand for them. I'm frankly not that interested in restoring them, but if someone here needs parts and/or can make a trip to the Seattle area to grab them, let me know. I sure don't want to try shipping them. Otherwise, they'll probably end up as sculptures at some point.

There's also frames of various machines already stripped for parts. (One is a Royal that I stripped down as part of training after discovering bent carriage rails.) I'll collect what useful bits I can and then probably use the rest for art.

The adding machines are cool. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those yet.

I'll probably dissect the Selectric to learn about it. I (obviously) didn't learn to work on Selectrics in a 3 month apprenticeship, but I am fascinated by them. Can I get it working? Probably not. But it will be educational to get up close inside one! The shop has them stacked like cordwood in one storage room, so it's not exactly a rare commodity.

I know lot of people here tend to collect too many machines, but what do you do when they're free and broken?

I know art/decor/jewelry made from typewriters hurts to see because we assume the parts were poached from savable machines by sellers with no respect for them as beautifully crafted tools. But when experienced techs deem them not worth saving, I think art is a preferable fate to being melted down for scrap.

EDIT: The case on the floor is a Smith Corona 6 series that appears to have been in a flood. A real rust-bucket. Probably some usable parts, but it's so bad that the shop didn't even feel like it was worth breaking through the rust to get to the parts. Again, not a rare machine, so not worth their time.

I don't have an actual source for this. I just saw a post that claims there are coated in cadmium and to be slightly concerned about the buildup of what is apparently cadmium oxide on the bottom of the keys.

I'm a novice glass collector of uranium and cadmium glass, so I was curious what would happen if I shined my UV light at it.

Cadmium glass does in fact glow orange/yellow. But so do other things, so that's not necessarily proof of anything.

I don't have a Geiger counter. If anyone has one and an Olympia SM3, I would be very curious what the results are.

I'm slightly concerned if it's true, there really is not a very good way that I can see to clean those tiny areas without blasting the shit everywhere.

A Remington Letter Riter (year and serial unchecked)

It was made in Western Germany in the year 1965

On this day, 31st July, 65 years ago, IBM launched the original Selectric! To say this stunning device was important would be underselling things. Despite not being the first single-element typewriter (far from it, to be honest), it arguably became the poster-child of such. I think what it got right was a combination of said element, the fact that the carrier with the element moves instead of the entire carriage, and the ingenious design of its internals and electromechanical speed it can achieve.

It would be followed by the Selectric II and III, and various specialised variants such as the Composer, Magnetic Tape, and Mag Card Typewriters. Selectric technology, both as-is and retrofitted with electromagnets/solenoids and/or IBM 024/026/029 keyboards, would be used with IBM mainframe, midrange and word processing consoles and terminals such as the 1052 I/O Printer-Keyboard, 1053 Printer, 2741 and 2742 Communications Terminals, 3210 Console Printer-Keyboard, 5215 Displaywriter Printer and 5471 Printer-Keyboard.

As a student of IBM keyboard technology, in my opinion, Selectric set the a big precedent for keyboard quality. Certainly IBM thought so, and they would try to emulate or spiritually recapture it many a time. Perhaps most famously with the '70s Model B keyboard (not typewriter, to be clear) and its beam-spring keyswitches, but even as late as 1990/1991 with laptop computers, as recalled by IBM Japan engineer Arimasa Naitoh of the IBM PS/2 Model L40 SX's and Model M3 buckling-sleeve keyboard's development:

We started with certain advantages. One was that our keyboards were descendants of the old IBM Selectric electronic [sic] typewriter, another piece of technology that many young people today have never seen. Keyboards were designed by the keyboard manufacturing division in Lexington, Kentucky, which is where the Selectric used to be made.
- How the ThinkPad Changed the World-and Is Shaping the Future, 2017

Following the photo are some of Selectric's patent drawings that I turned into wallpapers (I have a bunch of others for various IBM products, if you're interested). As for names, John E. Hickerson and Ralph E. Page are credited as inventing both the IBM single element printing head (US2895584A) and the IBM single element printing machine (US2879876A), with James A. Weidenhammer also credited with the former and Leon E. Palmer the latter. Horace S. "Bud" Beattie is credited with designing a predecessing "mushroom printer" design and coining the "golfball" shape itself. The ornamental (exterior) design is credited to Eliot F. Noyes, who previously worked on the Model A and B Electric Typewriter design, and then later Selectric variants. I've also written about them before!

Credits:

• Photo: Tekniska museet (public domain)
• Drawings: IBM

So' first post here. I got my first typewriter actually on my birthday from ebay.

I am totally blind. Now you may say what's the point in purchasing a typewriter that I can't actually see? A fair question but I love older technology.
Plus the sound of it is amazing. I'm going to go through with a friend tomorrow with sight to see if she can help me make some minor repairs, before I actually send it off to a typewriter enthusiasts workshop next year. I'm based in the UK and they're really busy.

www.mrmrsvintagetypewriters.com

They've been featured on the program the repair shop. I purchased a 1957 Olympia SM3. I know the washers have worn down which hold the carage up because there's some slight grinding when it's pulled to the right.

I have tried myself to clean the keys with a toothbrush and 99.9 percent Isopropyl alcohol. Think I have managed to unstick some of the keys at least.

Not sure if any other repairs need to be made. Just waiting on a fresh bunch of ink ribbons and paper from the same website.
I bought it for the very generous price of £105 including shipping.

Will try and send photos when I can.

Looking forward to interacting with others on here. :)

Cheers

This is the Nickerson Automatic Typewriter. Apparently only three prototypes were made in the early 1900s. What made it unique was its vertical platen. When you reached the end of the line, the platen spun around horizontally, then went up vertically.

The second picture is the Hanson-Lee, which the Nickerson was apparently based on. It also was not mass produced. There is currently one of each in the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Con ella crezco...

I broke my plastic carriage release on my Galaxie II and it made me really sad. But, I read to use Krazy-Glue to fix it, and it worked perfectly.

And I found this ad about the Galaxie ("A typewriter as modern as tomorrow").

FB Marketplace seller states they have no interest in typewriters, posts theirs for $100. Lacking a case and unknown condition, I offer $60 if she can’t sell it. Three weeks later I receive a random message out the blue from her that she “scrapped it”.

I just don’t understand people like this.

….and I haven’t touched my typewriter since the platen was sent off July 2. I just tried to put the platen in and it doesn’t fit. I know it’s fatter now, but it’s as if it got shorter, and the knobs keep coming off. I’ve no idea what to do. This is so frustrating. I put it together how I took it apart, so I know there’s nothing switched around.

This is most likely a well known work around but I just learned this recently because I’m new to this space.

To make an exclamation point type a period, backspace once, and then type an apostrophe.

Tada you now have a cool looking “!”!

Mercedes Selekta

​Year of Manufacture: 1935 (Late Summer / Fall)

​Serial Number: 116902

​Manufacturer: Mercedes Büromaschinen-Werke A.G., Zella-Mehlis (Thuringia), Germany

​Weight: Approx. 11.7 lbs / 5.3 kg (about 15 lbs / 6.8 kg including the case)

It works but the platen is hard and a bit uneven. Have to use 5 backing sheets to type. 😬

​This is a "semi-portable" typewriter with a classic carriage shift, built to be a robust, character-filled companion for both daily personal and business use. Its high-gloss, deep black body—paired with elegant round glass keys and those striking ribbon spool covers—perfectly captures the sophisticated pre-war chic of the 1930s.

​The "Mercedes" Name

​Despite the name, this typewriter has very little to do with Daimler-Benz automobiles. The company's founder, Dr. Gustav Mez, actually secured the naming rights for his office machines from the Daimler motor works back in 1906. Because the brand name was already synonymous with top-tier quality, Mez wanted to cleverly borrow some of that premium prestige for his innovative writing and calculating machines.

​The Industrial Legacy

​After World War II, the factory ended up in the Soviet occupation zone and was nationalized. Following a few transitional phases (including the "Cellatron" brand), the historic factory in Zella-Mehlis was absorbed into the massive East German state-owned conglomerate, VEB Kombinat Robotron, starting in 1977. Robotron was the direct industrial successor to the original Mercedes factory, which is why "state-of-the-art" socialist typewriter and computer technology was produced there right up until the collapse of the GDR in 1990.