Sunday, June 21, 2015

What makes a Fox tick

Its been about a year since I acquired, and last cleaned and lubricated, my wonderful Fox model 25. Therefore, now is as good a time as any to dig back into it and make it shine. Drawing inspiration from Mr. Richard Polt's recent post over at The Typewriter Revolution, I decided to see how quick I could take the main accessories off the machine.


As it turns out, the Fox desktops were designed with interchangeable carriages in mind, and by loosening the two large screws towards the rear of the machine, where the carriage body connects to the frame, and taking off the ruler indicator, and ensuring the carriage strap has been hooked to the pin on the frame, the entire carriage pops right off. It takes less than a minute, depending on how fast you are at unscrewing the 4 screws. To take the platen out of the carriage, you simply loosen the two plates which hold it in (When you take a look at a Fox carriage, you'll notice these almost immediately) and out pops the platen, knobs and all. Finally, the front plate is held in by only two screws on the forefront of the machine. With all this taken off...


You have a machine very open and ready for a cleaning.




For the sake of it, I wanted to show how the machine works. Its design is very similar to that of an Underwood, I would like to note. Upon pressing a key, the bar of course moves downard. In doing so, it pulls on an end of a pivoted peice. (See far left bar)


 This pivoting peice is long and vertical, reaching up to the top of the frame, and so the small movement at the base of the machine turns into a larger movement at the top



It is, at its top, also connected to the link which connects directly to the typebar.



Pulling the typebar from rest, and to the printing point.




 This post brought to you by the Fox Typewriter Company. Writing is better when you experience it, on a Fox.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Typewriter Company Letters

From my personal collection, here is a random selection of letters sent out from those manufacturers of our beloved writing machines.




The Underwood letter, to me, is by far the most interesting solely due to the outstanding way in which they ask the customer for payment. They don't heckle, they simply state the facts in a most professional manner which many modern corporations could learn from.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

From the workbench: A 1936 Royal Junior appears

Currently, I am knee deep in rusted parts which once composed a certain Corona Special. Hours upon hours of standing there, scrubbing things with steel wool, and I still have miles to go. To keep my spirits up, I decided to just go ahead and clean this little gem which I acquired from the same store as the SM3 came from. Took only two hours clean and repair the drawcord (despite the horrid location of the springdrum). It is my personal opinion that I would have rather they taken out the entire shifting mechanism in the stead of the bell. It's somewhat sad not hearing that tiny little "Ding" at the end of a line. *sad violin plays in background*




Monday, June 1, 2015

TBR Round 2: '30 Royal P/ '31 Underwood Standard/ '32 Smith Corona


Welcome to the second round of the TYPEWRITER BATTLE ROYAL! Where random machines of similar years are pitted against each other for the fun of... well, myself at least.
This round, we have a Royal '30 portable, a '31 Underwood Standard Portable Typewriter of the 4 bank variety, and a '32 Smith Corona Standard. Who Will Win!?!?!??!















Well, I've already run out of comparable machines. So, you get to decide the next matchup!

Potential Contestants so far unused:
Fox Model 25
Oliver 11
Underwood 3-bank
Remington 1 Portable
Fox 1 Portable
Olympia SM3
Royal 10
Remington 12
Royal Junior
Underwood Noiseless 77

Or if these machines should be matched against machines already used, let me know! Just throw your suggestion in the comments below.