This 1960 Facit T2 required speed and dedication to obtain. Facit desktops of any vintage are rare in the United States. But this one is even rarer. Its features distinguish it as a transitional bridge between the T1 and the final (and much more common) incarnation of the T2. The T1, the first standard typewriter of the fresh new “Facit” brand (previously, the legendary “Halda” brand), made a modernist splash when unveiled in 1958, a marked departure from the staid, traditional-looking machines previously offered by the Swedish manufacturer. This functional and futuristic objet d’art was the brainchild of Swedish prince Count Sigvard Oscar Fredrik Bernadotte of Wisborg, an industrial engineer by profession. The T1 was produced from 1958 to 1960, having been replaced by the T2 in that year. In contrast to its older sibling’s comparatively short production run, the T2’s career spanned more than a decade, finally being retired in 1972.

This particular T2’s serial number dates its manufacture to 1960, and places it among the first 15,000 or so T2s – quite remarkable given the fact that over 550,000 T2s rolled off the assembly line during its 12-year run. This particular machine is so early, that it retains many T1 features that would quickly disappear in later T2s. For example, the tab button and key un-jammer located on either side of the space bar; or the clear plastic paper support; or the tab-setting levers on the right and left sides of the machine. These are the last vestiges of T1 ergonomics and would fall victim to a redesign. Consequently, I feel doubly grateful that I found not only a T2, but an exceedingly early T2. It’s like having both a T1 and a T2!

Excited by the finding of an early transitional T2, I jumped at the chance to acquire it. Some may know that my hunt for a Facit desktop is not a sudden whim. I’ve been quite actively hunting for one for nearly a year. On three separate occasions, I had a T1 lined up for purchase, only to be foiled by circumstance or a fleet-footed competitor! But, suddenly, this early T2 presented itself, seemingly unnoticed and within driving range! Well, within driving range for a typewriter-collector, whose worldview routinely embraces 8-hour round trips in pursuit of elusive writing iron.

And, indeed, the mission to collect this Facit T2 involved an 8-hour journey. Well worth it. The day couldn’t have been more perfect for a long drive. On first glance, the T2 appeared solid and complete, with no rust. A thorough cleaning would certainly free the sticky keys. The bell, mysteriously, remained silent. I hoped this would not present a major problem and assumed, rightly as it turned out, that the bell assembly would be intact, if perhaps dirty or otherwise impeded. This project had every indication of being relatively straightforward and quickly completed.

But once the T2 was safely at home, that first impression of smooth sailing quickly gave way to reality. Yes, the bell was not functioning. Moreover, the tab had a serious problem. Indeed, pressing the tab button generated a hair-raising cacophony of gear grinding. This looked like another case of failing mid-century tab brakes. On the other hand, the keys – though sticking – soon swung freely. Application of the tried-and-true lighter fluid-soaked Q-tips made short work of decades-old grime gumming up the keybar segment. Putting the machine through its paces revealed that the mainspring was properly wound, the carriage releases worked, the carriage glided effortlessly from left to right and right to left, the tab set levers functioned properly, and everything just worked. The problems had thus been isolated to the silent bell and the grinding tab mechanism. Another word about that gliding carriage. The mid-century Facits distinguish themselves among their peers in the absolute smoothness of their carriages. The secret: the cylindrical carriage bar runs inside a tube surrounded by ball bearings. There is no squeak, no zip, no ratchet sound, no resistance…nothing. It’s a mechanical marvel to behold. And one of the most satisfying attributes of the Facit T-series standards.

Now, back to our troubleshooting. Turning my attention to the bell, I removed the top rear panel of the carriage. Access was easily achieved.

The bell mechanism seemed to all be there; pulling and releasing the little hammer caused a satisfying “ding.” I went ahead and depressed the carriage release and moved the carriage all the way left and all the way right. No bell ring. Something had to be wrong with the interaction between the carriage and the margin. Indeed, in most machines, the setting of the right margin determines when the bell will ring (thereby alerting the typist to the impending end of the current line of text). Time to investigate the margin setting system.

The Facit T2 has a rather unique margin setting system. It features two levers, on either end of the carriage, marked “M” (presumably for “margin”). The levers are very reminiscent of the famous Royal “Magic Margin” system, but the Facit version works quite differently. Rather than spring-loaded margin stops that jump into position at the touch of a lever, the Facit margin stops wait – immobile – until the typist moves the carriage and “hooks” or captures the margin stop. Once the margin stop is captured, the movement of the carriage carries the margin stop to the desired place. During this whole process, the typist must have the margin lever (left or right) pulled forward. This ensures that the margin stop will be “snagged” and pulled along with the carriage. Oddly, it is the left margin stop (not the right one!) which triggers the ringing of the bell.

And it was the left margin stop that was giving trouble. Upon closer inspection, the left margin stop has a “trigger bar” that is free to move up and down. The bar always wants to stay up, thanks to the force of a small coil spring. It is that perpetually upstanding trigger bar that catches the bell hammer as the carriage moves to the left.

But on this Facit T2, that trigger bar was bent. Uggg. The bend in the trigger bar caused the bar to bind against the rest of the left margin stop. As a result, instead of freely moving up and down and springing back to the up position, the trigger bar remained stuck in the down position. Consequently, the trigger bar remained too low to catch on the bell hammer, leading to a silent bell. Thankfully, with needle-nose pliers and a patient hand, I was abl to form the trigger bar just enough to unbind it. It now is free to move up and down and spring back into the up position! Moving the carriage left and right now consistently produced the familiar “ting” “ting”! The bell had recovered is voice!

But fixing the bell was just the first of several issues that required attention. The tab button problem still loomed large. It was time to investigate further. Thankfully, the Facit T2, like its older sibling the T1, has a quick-remove carriage (often referred to as “demountable”). With a flick of an under-mounted switch on either side of the machine, the carriage could be lifted straight up and off. One must remember, however, to remove the ribbon from the ribbon vibrator before lifting the carriage off, as the ribbon vibrator is part of the carriage! This is quite unique; most demountable typewriters have the ribbon vibrator connected to the base, not the carriage.

Looking into the fascinating inner workings of the Facit, I spotted what I believed to be the tab brake mechanism.

Giving the tab brake mechanism a gentle rotation with my hand, I immediately discovered the problem. The tab brake was seized. It would not rotate, at least not without significant force. By way of clarification, the tab mechanism on the Facit T1 and T2 is somewhat unique. On many standard typewriters, the tab brake interacts with a toothed rail running the length of the carriage. Thus, when the carriage is released by pressing the tab button, the toothed rail on the carriage meshes with the gear on the tab brake and voila, the carriage is slowed down to a gentle crawl. On the Facit, however, the tab brake interacts with the mainspring drum. When the tab button is pressed on the Facit, the carriage is released and, consequently, the mainspring pulls on the cloth band (or string) attached to the carriage. This, in turn causes the carriage to move to the left. At the same time, the mainspring drum begins to rotate, in effect reeling in the cloth band and winding it up. The rotating mainspring drum’s toothed circumference meshes with the gear on the tab break and presto, the carriage is slowed to a less-than-ludicrous speed.

Unfortunately, this orderly sequence of events–from pressing the tab button to gentle leftward motion of the carriage–was interrupted. Indeed, it was interrupted by the ear-splitting grind of gears. With the tab brake seized and unable to rotate, the rapidly rotating toothed circumference of the mainspring drum gnashed violently against the stationary tab brake gear. The whole situation very much resembled the hair-raising cacophony produced by a manual transmission by trying to shift gears with a worn synchro. Uggg.

Midcentury tab brakes. It’s as if they were all designed to fail. Several of my 1960s machines are plagued with seized or otherwise rotten tab brakes. Frustratingly, tab brakes are not just fringe items, like a fouled up margin setter or ribbon color selector. No, tab brakes tend to be integral, baked-in mechanisms that interact with (and inevitably impede) the major moving parts of the typewriter. A seized tab brake not only leads to chaos when indenting; it can cause the whole carriage/keybars/mainspring ecosystem to grind to a halt. Rotten tab brakes cannot be ignored.

So, falling back on prior experience, I felt that the simplest solution–if possible–would be to remove the tab brake mechanism and see what happened. It was simple enough to do. Unscrewing one bolt and unhooking a spring did the trick. Out came the offending tab brake!

How did the removal of the tab brake affect the Facit T2? Positively, as it turns out. The machine is more fleet of foot and spritely. Pressing the tab button has become an adventure, as it launches the carriage to the left. However, one quickly develops the universally helpful habit of placing a guarding hand in the carriage’s path, or simply holding the carriage as it glides leftward. Frankly, it something I tend to do with every typewriter, just in case. As with the Underwood Touchmaster Five, I wouldn’t want this to happen:

As an aside, tinkering with the tab brake mechanism had a rather unfortunate side effect. Toying with the mainspring drum led to the disintegration of the mainspring drawband.

Thankfully, a remedy was quickly found. Using braided fishing line rated to 100 pounds of tension, I soon had a new and much improved drawband. I simply removed the metal fixtures from the old drawband and re-used them!

With the bell singing anew and the tab button functioning again, the Facit T2 has been a joy to type on. The smooth carriage return is a pleasure unto itself. The crisp break of the keys as you press them and the satisfying smack of the type bars into the platen invite the typist to sit down for spell of composing. The machine itself, after having the pleasure of dismantling it a bit, is amazingly clean. Not a spot of rust, not a speck of dust. Was it even used? More interestingly, why did a Swedish Facit standard end up in a sleepy Central Florida town? It most certainly would have been fabulously expensive compared to the ubiquitous Royals, Underwoods, and Remingtons–all great typers in the early 1960s and American-made. Why buy the top-of-the-line MacBook of its day and neglect it? Perhaps the small family firm from which I bought the Facit had, in 1960, looked optimistically toward a golden future. When that future never came, they were left, not house poor, but equipment poor. A shuttered tech startup with a gleaming bank of new iPads. Or perhaps, the firm’s owner loved the Facit and wanted one for its own sake, because it was so good. I probably won’t ever know the complex circumstances that brought this rare and beautiful Swedish machine to a rural town in the American Southland. But it’s fun to imagine the T2’s journeys. I think it will become a favorite.

I was very excited to find this mid-1960s Underwood Touchmaster Five. This typing tank was the the final full-sized manual typewriter offering from the legendary Underwood company while still under its own steam. Indeed, by 1963, the Underwood Company had completed its merger with Olivetti. Consequently, while the Typemaster (not to be confused with our subject today, the Touchmaster) brought human-powered Underwood standards into the 1970s, that design visibly shows signs of Olivetti styling, at least externally. In many ways, the Touchmaster Five represents the end of an era–American standards like the venerable Remingtons, Royals, and Underwoods would soon be replaced with cheaper, foreign-made machines, much of them manufactured in Japan. Perhaps this was an early harbinger of the looming existential threat–the rise of the personal computer.

But, setting the sweeping arc of technological history aside for the moment, let us return to our subject for today. Having negotiated a very reasonable price for the Touchmaster Five, I took a delightful 90-minute drive on a gorgeous late-Spring afternoon to pick it up. At first glance, everything seemed in order, but it was clear that the machine needed a thorough cleaning to free its typebars. As I learned from the seller, this machine had been his daily workhorse at his Federal government office and had followed him home upon his retirement. Despite his hopes of using it for personal correspondence, the machine languished for years, ignored by children and grandchildren. The man’s wife finally persuaded him to part with it, though his reluctance was subtly evident. I know that feeling and I can spot that look. I reassured him that it would go to a great home and would be cherished. I would clean it up and get it back to full strength. We parted ways and I carefully placed the Underwood in my car.

Having brought the Touchmaster home safely, the real inspection could begin. I began with the obvious problem–the frozen typebars. My usual method of swabbing the bars with lighter fluid-soaked q-tips did the trick, and the bars were swinging freely once again. That and a once over with a damp rag, I thought, would be the end of the project. But the typebars were only the beginning.

Testing all the machine’s functions, I casually depressed the tab key and… the typewriter froze up. The keys wouldn’t actuate the typebars, the carriage was stuck to the left, the tab button wouldn’t reset upward, the whole thing was jammed. I tried gently persuading the carriage with my hands and that seemed to free the machine. But, unsatisfied with a temporary fix, I tried my luck with the tab key again. And, once again, the carriage moved left and the whole mechanism seized up again. Something was up with the tab system.

So, what I thought would become a simply cleaning operation turned into a full-blown investigation. I needed to get inside the machine. Fully anticipating my needs 50 years ago, Underwood designed the Touchmaster Five with easily removable body panels. No tools required–with light finger pressure, the panels just popped off. In contrast to the Remington Super-Riter with its myriad fenders held on my multiple hidden screws, the Touchmaster shed its skin in seconds.

Now that I was in, I began poking around to see how everything worked. Since the tab mechanism seemed to be the source of the problem, I started by seeing if anything in the tab column was awry.

Each typewriter has its (more or less) unique way of setting tabs. But, particular tab-setting mechanisms run in families. For example, the Underwood tab column has been around since the legendary Underwood No. 6 of the 1930s.

The tab column on the Underwood Five looked good.

Since everything seemed OK with the tab column, I went ahead and removed it. This is relatively easy to do on the Underwood, but the trick is getting the little lever (the one that interacts with the tab stops) to unhook from row of tab stops.

By removing the carriage’s rear panel, thereby exposing the orderly rows of tab stops, I could free the tab actuating lever.

With the tab column finally removed from the machine, I could really inspect it closely. Hmmm. Nothing out of place. Actually, extremely clean and smoothly functioning. The tab column was not the problem. This was frustrating news; pressing the tab button caused the machine to seize up, yet the tab column was functioning perfectly. Well, when in doubt, take parts out. Hoping to stumble upon the real problem, I went ahead and continued disassembling the Underwood.

During disassembly, I was delighted to find how clean and well-maintained this typewriter was. As I worked to find the root cause of the problem plaguing the tab button, I ended up re-attaching the carriage, though I left the drawband disconnected. As I fiddled with carriage—now, once again, sliding gracefully on its rails—I found an unexpected interaction between the carriage and a clump of mystery gears.

The rack of gear teeth attached to the carriage interfaces (as expected) with the typewriter’s escapement mechanism, which allows the carriage to advance with each keystroke. But, in the Underwood Touchmaster Five, the carriage rack also interfaces with the clump of mystery gears, specifically a small pinion gear sitting atop the “mystery gear assembly.” The question remained, what does that clump of gears do? It seemed to have no other interaction with the machine; indeed, it was freestanding, so to speak. Its only connection was with the carriage rack.

Pondering the function of the “mystery gears,” I moved the carriage back and forth with my hand (I had already disconnected the drawband, so the carriage was free to move without any tension on it). As I slid the carriage left and right along its rails, the carriage rack engaged the mystery pinion gear, which, in turn, caused the other gears in the “clump” to move as well. As I moved the carriage faster, the mystery gears seemed to move slower. In fact, the mystery gears seemed to also have a feedback effect on the carriage: they were slowing the movement of the carriage. What possible purpose could this dampening effect serve?

After some thought and a quick perusal of a 1968 Underwood Repair Manual featuring the Touchmaster Five, the fog lifted. The clump of “mystery gears” was, in fact, a tab brake!

And what, exactly, is a tab brake? Its a clever mechanism designed to slow the speed of the carriage when the tab button is engaged, thereby checking the usually violent motion of an unrestrained carriage. At the touch of the tab button, a carriage left unfettered, (and under the very persuasive influence of the taut drawband) can move wildly from extreme right to extreme left of its travel in a flash. It only stops by battering itself against the left margin stop and the left side of the machine. Over time, this full-speed ramming can either damage the left margin stop or, in extreme cases, cause the carriage to be launched from the machine altogether!

The tab brake in the repair manual is a friction brake. But the tab brake in the Underwood Five under consideration today in an even more exciting mechanism—it’s a centrifugal brake.

The centrifugal brake mechanism consists of two pieces of metal, which are free to move and are connected to the central axle in the housing. As the carriage moves left (after the tab button is pressed), it picks up speed. The carriage rack (now speeding along) causes the pinion (“mystery gear pinion”) to rotate and accelerate. This rotational acceleration, in turn, causes the two free-floating masses to move outward (centripetal acceleration, resulting in centrifugal motion). The outwardly moving masses, in turn, cause the axle (the axle they’re attached to) to spin more slowly. This process is analogous to a figure skater moving their arms and legs inward and outward as they spin, the former causing him or her to spin faster, while the latter causes him or her to spin slower.

This brake mechanism is ingenious–simple and effective, yet at the same time elegant in its operation. The only problem was . . . it didn’t work, at least not on my machine. Not only did it not work (that may have merely been a minor inconvenience when tabbing), it was causing the entire machine to seize up and grind to a halt. Not good. And not acceptable to the serious collector. While the gears of the tab brake mechanism could turn, they really didn’t want to; the gears were nearly frozen. Like a surgeon weighing his options, I considered removing the ailing mechanism and seeing what I could do to make it healthy again. Thankfully, as with the delightfully simple-to-remove body panels, Underwood anticipated my needs and provided for easy removal of the entire tab brake mechanism.

With the brake mechanism in hand, my earlier concerns were confirmed. The gears were very unwilling to turn and essentially frozen. I suspected that the 1960s-era plastic of the large gear was mainly to blame and, indeed, multiple cracks were visible on the gear. I briefly toyed with the idea of turning the big gear by hand, hopefully freeing it from its stubborn immobility. However, the cracks on the gear’s surface gave me pause; it seemed all too easy to snap the gear into pieces. Weighing what to do next, I turned back to the typewriter and played with the keys, space bar, and carriage release. All of these functioned perfectly without the tab brake mechanism. I then gave the tab button a press and whooooosh! the carriage shot across and crashed violently on the right margin stop. Not good. Nevertheless, with some presence of mind, one could remember to place a guiding hand on the carriage before punching the tab button, thereby preventing the violent lurch. In short, the tab also functioned, even without the tab brake. Sensing that, for the moment, discretion was the better part of valor, I decided that simply leaving the tab brake mechanism out of the machine would correct all its ills. Perhaps later, the root cause of the tab brake’s dysfunction can be plumbed, and the part can be fixed and returned to the typewriter. Given the ease of its removal, re-installation of the tab brake should be just as simple and un-intrusive!

With everything (except the tab brake) back together, the Underwood is a typing machine! Literally and figuratively. It types like a breeze, with the familiar and comforting staccato of yesteryear, instantly transporting the listener into the smoky staleness of a bustling 1960s newspaper bullpen. Shouting from the wire room, clickety-clacking of keys and platens, rushing of papers and feet, overlapping hurried phone conversations, the ceaseless din of loud important work. And the smells; fragrant pipe smoke curling into the air, intertwining with dainty wisps of cigarette smoke and hearty puffs of cigar smoke. Ink, ink, ink; in typewriter ribbons endlessly spinning, in mimeograph machines eternally whirring, in fountain pens forever drinking and spurting the black gold–not oil, but print. Tap-tap-tap goes the telegraph, buzzing the wires with the latest, linking continents as well as towns. Tick-tock-tick-tock, the big clock counting down until deadline. Hustle, bustle, hustle, bustle. What a time and place to be alive!

Sometimes a little goes a long way.

Sometimes you start down a path convinced that you’ve got the problem cornered. Only to realize that you’re heading down a rabbit hole. When I acquired this Remington Super-Riter, I found that it was in immaculate condition – no rust, no gunk, no dust – just perfect. Except for the carriage… As I tried typing a line, I noticed that the carriage would stop moving at about the halfway point. The keybars continued to strike, but the platen was stuck. Using the carriage release buttons allowed the carriage to move freely back and forth. So what was up? The carriage seemed free to move when it was released, but it would get stuck halfway when typing.

I figured it was no big deal, just some gumminess in the carriage rails. With a lighter fluid-dipped q-tip, I would get the rails clean and the carriage running flawlessly again. I tried this approach, but I couldn’t reach deep along the rails before bumping into the carriage itself. The cleaning job didn’t work; the carriage still stuck at the midpoint of its journey. Hmmm.

After mulling this problem over for a while, I realized that I would have to remove the carriage and get deep into the rail assembly. This model of Remington typewriters (the “Super-Riter” series) has a multi-part rail system. There is a lower rail bolted to the typewriter’s frame, an upper rail bolted to the carriage, and a set of bearings arranged in parallel rows that nest between the two rails. This system allows for very smooth carriage movement and is pretty slick to look at. Disassembly and reassembly, however, are not so slick. Actually, they’re nightmarish. Once I got everything apart (mostly by instinct, with a few glances at a 1951-vintage repair manual I found online), I panicked briefly, thinking I would never get this assembly back together. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to the rabbit hole, shall we?

Knowing that I would need to get at the carriage rail assembly, I considered how to get in there. This machine, unlike Olympia SG1s, Adler Universals, and Hermes Ambassadors, doesn’t have a quick-release carriage. Nope, the Remington wasn’t going to go quietly. It’s secrets would only be revealed by the efforts of a truly adventuresome dactylographer. On the other hand, the Super-Riter had a neat ace up its sleeve to help the typewriter tinkerer: the Fold-a-Matic system! This mechanical magic trick allows the repairman to literally unfold the whole typewriter, granting easy access to its major systems. Its kind of like a typewriter Jeffries Tube. Behold:

As the above diagram (courtesy of a vintage repair manual) demonstrates, with the removal of a few screws, you can open up the typewriter like a briefcase. Voila:

Now, how exactly do we get from buttoned up, ready to go writing iron, to this? Well, first, we have to remove the sleek 1950s fenders:

With the fenders all removed, the real magic can happen. Time to engage the Fold-a-Matic. Here are the the screws that make the Fold-a-Matic possible:

With all those screws removed, the main event can take center stage. I present, the unfolding:

So, having successfully activated the Fold-a-Matic, I took a moment to bask in my accomplishment. But, the project had only just begun. Now, to get into the carriage rail assembly. Why pour over a repair manual when you can explore? Screws began to turn and parts began to fall off in earnest. Soon, I had a pile of parts and a vague understanding of how everything went back together:

After much unbolting and flinging aside, I finally reached the carriage rail assembly. And promptly broke it. Well, not quite broke it – it just wouldn’t go back the way it was. I left the lower rail bolted to the typewriter frame, unbolted the upper rail from the carriage, and, as I slid the upper rail off the lower rail – oops – there fell the nested bearings. At this point, I panicked and forgot to continue taking photos. So, instead, I’ve provided diagrams from the 1951 repair manual. This is the complete carriage assembly, including the rails:

And here are the lower rail, upper rail, and bearing assembly, marked on the diagram:

Thankfully, the bearings weren’t separate little balls or tiny cylinders. Rather, they were arranged in their own small sub-assemblies, which fit in between the upper and lower carriage rails. The trick was getting these parts to mate-up again. A glance at the repair manual illuminated my frustrating mistake. The manual insisted that the repairman should make a small pencil mark on the lower carriage rail showing the relative position of the upper carriage rail and the nested bearing assembly. I hadn’t made any such mark. So… it was trial and error to get the parts to line up again. It’s difficult to describe the various permutations of my attempts to re-align everything. Suffice it to say, it was touch-and-go there for a while, with much doubt that the thing would ever work again. Imagine trying to re-rail a de-railed toy train set, in the dark, with a loop of fishing line as your only tool. It took a while.

While I was in there, tinkering with the carriage rail assembly, I noticed that the rails and bearings were, in fact, a little dirty. But, once they were all back together, I was able to easily move the upper rail (sans carriage) along the lower rail with no binding or seizing whatsoever. And, I hadn’t even cleaned anything. This didn’t bode well. Clearly the problem was not as I had imagined it; the carriage rail assembly was not the culprit.

Having spent hours disassembling and, now, reassembling the carriage rail assembly and carriage (which further disassembled into its paper bail and tabulator mechanism assemblies), I was no closer to solving the reluctant carriage problem. The carriage was still getting stuck halfway along its straight and narrow route. There had to be something else causing the roadblock. I unfolded the machine again and took a fresh look at its various systems: tab mechanism, bell assembly, mainspring housing, drawband. Suddenly, the mainspring caught my attention.

Maybe the mainspring simply wasn’t tensioned enough. That would, theoretically, cause the carriage to be sluggish. No pull, no pep. But how to tension it? Most typewriters have some easy way to add or subtract spring tension. But the Remington refused to give up its secrets yet again. Would I really have to remove the drawband and rotate the mainspring drum manually, hoping the drum wouldn’t slip in my hand and cause the powerful mainspring to unwind violently? Would it break under the stress?

Just as I was pondering my next move, I took a closer look at the mainspring assembly. There was a small lever that seemed to be attached directly to the mainspring.

I pulled on it and that caused the mainspring to unwind by one “tooth” of its attached gear. I pulled the lever the other way and the mainspring unwound by another “tooth.” Repeating this back-and-forth motion with the lever unwound the mainspring almost completely. So, thought I, there must be an equally easy way to wind the mainspring back to full power. I noticed that the mainspring had a large flathead screw in the center of its housing.

So, I took a screwdriver to it and gave it a turn. It turned easily with a satisfying “clicking” sound. Sure enough, the mainspring was winding up, tightening the slack drawband in the process. I began winding the mainspring up, every so often testing the carriage to see if it would get stuck along its travel. The carriage did get stuck. But, as I wound up the mainspring, the carriage got stuck less and less. At one point, the mainspring stopped winding, but I realize that the mainspring housing had just bound on something. Rotating the housing with my hand, the mainspring suddenly sprang to life again and the drawband pulled tight. Tinkering with the mainspring, I eventually found the optimum spring tension, and the carriage no longer stalled on its journey across the keys. The typewriter was fixed.

So, it turned out that there was no need to get into the carriage rail assembly. There was no need to engage the Fold-a-Matic system at all. I could do all the mainspring winding I wanted with just the rear fender off. I had spent hours completely disassembling the carriage for no reason at all. But, I learned all about the Fold-a-Matic, the carriage rail system with its nested bearings, and the mainspring housing and gear. It was a thorough education on mid-Century Remingtons that, I’m sure, will prove valuable someday. Nevertheless, sometimes it pays to consider all alternative diagnoses of a problem before diving into the approach that “looks” right. If you’re open to trying the simplest method first, you might avoid falling down the rabbit hole. But, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

The typewriter can transform thought into physical reality.

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To save time is to lengthen life.

-Remington