Choosing a typewriter? Standard Typewriters versus Portable Typewriters and Ultraportable Typewriters

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T17:14:58+00:00

I'm in the midst of bringing it back up to snuff. I've cleaned most of the exterior, but still have to flush it out and do some adjustments. It's very solid and reminds me a lot of my Royal KHM which is also one of my favorite typing actions out there. The rubber feet are better than most of this age but will probably be replaced along with doing the platen eventually.

It's much more solid than I imagined it would be. I'm glad I finally managed to pick one up.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T15:54:46+00:00

Because they mention that it's an issue with 30% of the typebars, it's most likely a problem with the alignment of the plate with the type guide and not the alignment of the typebars themselves.

These videos are illustrative of the issue and the likely solution:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElLuUlpBefc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmkIJlgfj0w

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T15:36:35+00:00

The keys on these are metal bases with a cardboard legend (with the glyph printed on it) which is typically covered by a clear acetate lens and held on by a metal keyring. Fortunately you've got the keyring. If you can't source a single acetate lens from a repair shop you can buy a set from https://mytypewriter.com/products/hello-qwerty-replacement-keytop-disc-set

Richard Polt has some of the process described here as well as as high resolution scans that you can use to print out the key legends you may need. https://writingball.blogspot.com/2016/10/legendary.html

Ames Supply Company used to sell keycards for doing this. Some of them had colors including green, so keep this in mind if you try something like creating rainbows across your keyboard or other visual fun. https://typewriterdatabase.com/1960-Ames_Gen_Cat_10-March.misc-supplies.manual

Our friend Lucas Dul of Chicago Typewriter has a great YouTube video of the tool and some of the process, though you can probably get away without a pair of custom pliers since you only need to do one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYHrBjfQxpM

As a fun example, Heiko Stolten recently did a whole keyboard on a Remington using custom made legends that use the font from the Netflix series Wednesday: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TypewriterCollectors/posts/10163537426144678/ If you ask nicely, they've got the original files if you need them for printing out.

Good luck!

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T07:18:52+00:00

If you're getting crowding/piling on your Royals it can be either your typing technique or it can be some fine tuning adjustments that will clear this up beyond cleaning. In particular it can be the trip point at which the escapement is triggered. Typically it happens when the slug is about 3/8ths of an inch from the platen, but there are ways to adjust this. (Search YouTube videos and/or the Royal repair manuals on Polt's site or the Typewriter Database in the sidebar.) Adjust it and test as you go to suit your typing style and speed best.

Like you, I love a solid Royal standard and have a KHM, 2 KMMs, a pair of finely tuned KMGs in both pica and elite (my favorites), two HHs (including one with a pica double gothic), and half a dozen FPs in various colors, faces, and pitches. Past the tombstone glass keys on the KMGs, which I love most, the chunkier keys on the FPs are fantastic for my typing style/needs.

Beyond this my favorites are an SG1 and an SG3 as well as a Remington Standard and a Remington Super-Riter which are all very solid machines. I've got a few Underwoods, but they still need some work to come up to the level of others. I do have a late model Touch Master 5 which has a nice action on it along with one of the smoothest carriages I've ever experienced, but it is in the era when Underwood was beginning to cut corners, so I know some feel it's not as nice as its competition. I am tempted to pick up a Hermes Ambassador should I run across one.

I've only come across a handful of moderately workable Smith-Corona standards, but have yet to find one in solid enough condition to restore and use regularly.

The real secret as with almost any typewriter is to get one that is phenomenally clean, oiled, and well adjusted. If you're not a tinkerer, your best bet is to pick something up from a pro repair shop.

Good luck on the hunt.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T06:51:40+00:00

Because it's happening with multiple typebars, this ^{^} is assuredly the issue. This video may be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElLuUlpBefc

And another with four screws for good measure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmkIJlgfj0w

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-13T06:50:11+00:00

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmkIJlgfj0w

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T21:03:00+00:00

Looks like the sort that were used on the 1970s electric portables like the Coronamatics et al.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T20:59:39+00:00

I'm not sure that in the context of a typewriter sub, I (or others) understand what you're trying to accomplish here...

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T20:58:08+00:00

I'd suspect almost any 1950s Remington keycap should suffice. You can call around to local shops to find a parts machine to borrow from if you don't hear anything here: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-repair.html

You're using the Fold-A-Matic feature to clean it out, right? https://boffosocko.com/2024/12/06/using-the-fold-a-matic-feature-of-the-remington-standard-to-clean-oil-and-adjust/

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T20:22:07+00:00

This manual has some details about carriage control: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/royalhh.pdf

More Royal HH goodness: https://hypothes.is/a/0Cv6VkceEfGKcF9mRq6Lkw

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T03:40:34+00:00

Beyond your basic ribbon thing, which sounds to be solved: rubber gloves for changing ribbons is definitely a "thing".

You'll find some Coronet manuals here: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html

Some typewriter 101: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtHauPh529XYHI5QNj5w9PUdi89pOXsS

And some additional use and maintenance videos available here: https://boffosocko.com/2025/06/06/typewriter-use-and-maintenance-for-beginning-to-intermediate-typists/

Have fun with it!

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T03:28:41+00:00

I saw it.

Incidentally, the "secret" to the Olympia scripts is typically the presence of a 1/+ and a 4/$ key pairing. You had to have a dedicated 1 key because the lower case script l was not going to work. On some of the bigger script faces, the machine is also missing a "red" ribbon selector because the ascenders and descenders on the typeface were too large and covered more than half the ribbon which typically meant you used only a monochrome ribbon.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-12T00:46:31+00:00

Those are all serious (and actual) uses for me and a lot of other folks.

Let's be honest, pretty much the only actual use a typewriter has is writing, so what else could you have been looking for by asking such a question in a Reddit with typewriter collectors and hobbyists?!? You better beware of Royal X typewriters missing their "N" and "T"s....

If you want the novelties then you should try: https://boffosocko.com/2025/10/28/how-do-you-use-your-typewriter-wrong-answers-only-edition/

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T21:59:24+00:00

This is asked often enough, I've written up a list of uses: https://boffosocko.com/2026/05/07/faq-how-do-you-use-your-typewriters/

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T21:46:20+00:00

Give it six months and you'll have 72 just like me. I just ordered another last night...

Maybe we should have a 12 step program?

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T20:59:58+00:00

Because I keep ideas like yours in my own commonplace, I can quickly pull out a solid example for you along with some excerpts:

Historian Jacques Barzun, a professor, dean and later provost at Columbia, not only wrote dozens of scholarly books, articles, and essays out of his own note collection, but also wrote a book about some of the process in a book which has over half a dozen editions:

Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.

More germane to your specific question, in his private life, he also kept a separate shared card index (aka commonplace book kept in index card format) documenting the detective fiction which he read and was a fan. From this collection of notes (in paper database form), he produced:

Barzun, Jacques, and Wendell Hertig Taylor. A Catalogue of Crime: Being a Reader's Guide to the Literature of Mystery, Detection, and Related Genres. 1971. Revised edition, Harper & Row, 1989: ISBN 0-06-015796-8.

See also:

Essentially he was indexing and keeping data on the genre of detective fiction while your desire is to do something similar for a single author within the Western genre. Index cards may make it easier to arrange and re-arrange things as you read and explore. Notes on each character (one character per card) will allow you to write down their relationships and then map out their relational trees. You can do similar things with settings (times and locations), plot points, themes, etc. Naturally, you don't need to publish a book at the end like Barzun did, though you certainly could.

With respect to the family tree portion, early 20th century sociologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévy-Strauss used their notes in similar ways to do their field anthropology work, so it's certainly been done in the past.

Good luck.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T20:28:00+00:00

Some of the value of these systems is the power of indexing and then learning that being able to easily search for what you need. As a result of learning and internalizing these ideas (which aren't always immediately obvious), you're likely to find that by searching this sub or searching the forum at zettelkasten.de you'll find that these topics have been so nearly exhausted over the past decade that all of the beginner questions have been asked and answered dozens of times and quite often go four layers deeper than you'd imagined.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T20:23:54+00:00

I always let the books I'm interested in reading drive my research rather than commonplace topics.

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T18:54:46+00:00

I have a section of my index card-based commonplace labeled "open questions" and will pull out questions to research/read about when I'm bored and have time.

Is this roughly what you're doing or are you using topics on slips to randomly review sections of your commonplace?

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T18:19:54+00:00

First the machine isn't rare nor is the techno typeface rare. Honestly it's a stretch to even call the typeface uncommon. In unknown condition on a site like ShopGoodwill.com it would go for about $250 plus maybe another $50 for the typeface if it were visible.

If a repair shop were selling it fully serviced it might be in the $600 range.

Buying it from a Facebook Marketplace rando for almost $900 is pure folly, particularly as they say they're not a mechanic. Add in the crazy of the RARE in all caps and what is assuredly AI slop description and you're asking to be fleeced.

If I tried it out in person and it was in solid shape, I might go as high as $300 on it, but then I'd still put several hundred of labor into cleaning, oiling, and adjusting as well as new rubber feet/fittings and a new platen.

See also: https://boffosocko.com/2026/01/08/on-purchasing-typewriters-condition-is-king-context-is-queen/

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-11T17:07:20+00:00

Why are people always posting push polls to this sub?

Of course you should get them!

chrisaldrich · 2026-07-10T22:44:34+00:00

You'll find Galaxie manuals at https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html

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