Tuesday, July 1, 2014

The Curious Brown Fox


Greetings to thee, Typospherians. Today, I ask for your help in dealing with my Fox Portable Typewriter.
In working upon it, I have uncovered questions and mysteries which, for some lucky others, have already been solved. To begin, I would ask of you:

1) How does the Bell-ringing system work? On my machine, upon receiving it, the wire holding the weight which strikes the bell was snapped off from where it should have been, and the wire used as a spring was out of place. I have need of the knowledge of how these pieces are supposed to be put back onto the machine, as for the life of me I cannot figure it out. This is my most serious issue.

2) Explanation for the Ribbon movement. In looking at how the machine operates, both spool mechanisms appear to be rotated at the same time in opposite directions. Assuming this machine was not, in fact, designed to be useless, how does this allow the ribbon to not simply be torn asunder?

3) Where in the blazes is the serial number? It was difficult enough to find the S.N. on my Fox 25, but I've yet to stumble upon it on the portable despite taking a decent amount of the machine apart. It must either be caked in dust to such an extent that i am unable to recognize its existence, or Fox stopped caring about putting S.N. on their machines as they went bankrupt.

I eagerly await any aide which may be granted.

Words are Winged

1 comment:

  1. On question #2: try loosening the nut on whichever spool is being unspooled. When you reach the end of the ribbon, tighten it and loosen the other one. Crude, yes, but a common system on early portables.

    ReplyDelete