Cut-out drawing of the Underwood 4-bank portable typewriter (why?)

Inside the lid of the carrying case of the typewriter, there is a nicely cut-out image of the typewriter itself.

This label is present in more (all?) of the early Underwood 4-bank portable cases, so almost certainly this was pasted inside the lid by Underwood themselves.

It's a nice touch. Having looked at it a bit more, did start to wonder what the reason was behind this little pasted label. As owner, you'd know this was the lid for your Underwood 4-bank. In the 1920s it would I think anyhow be most unusual for anyone to own more than one portable typewriter. And a shop or dealer would for sure know to match a lid with the correct typewriter.

There is no additional text or advertising copy - and that would in any case be a bit late; when looking at the inside of the lid, the viewer most likely already is the owner of the machine. For adding advertising copy to the machine, a more likely chosen solution would have been to visibly stow e.g. the instruction leaflet (as e.g. on some Royal portable).

Perhaps it was simply an expression of the pride they took in their new 4-bank Standard Portable. (Do late 3-bank Portables have a 3-bank picture inside the lid?)

The decision for the extra cost of making and pasting this label was probably documented and written about in Underwood company internal memo's and work instructions. These will however all be long gone.

So whilst it's a nice touch, it does leave me wondering on the thinking behind it.

Difficult to date, timeless construction (from 1884)

Once very common and still found on flea-markets and in thrift stores, the pocket spring balance. In this instance, a Hughes Pocket Balance with the scale marked in kilos.

Above the legend stating it is a Hughes Pocket Balance, there is the knot and arrow logo of Salter. Near the bottom of the faceplate, it states 'patent'. And indeed this is a patented construction for a low-cost mass-manufactured pocket spring balance. 

The patent was applied in Britain (granted as British patent 800 of 1884) and in several other countries. Inventors are John Hughes and Thomas Bache Salter, assigning to George Salter & Co. of West Bromwich - makers of spring scales since the 1790s. The drawings of e.g. the Canadian patent 20,397 show exactly the clever construction of the item above.

The single metal sheet at the back forms the frame, with the several shaped pieces slotting into and onto the spring and frame like a sliding-puzzle. Only a few rivets needed to create a working unit, no brazing or soldering. 

The top of the frame sheet is shaped with 'flaps' as shown also in the above figures from the US patent 390,522 applied for in 1884 and issued in 1888. These flaps are folded over to form the top wall of the frame, slotting into the top-eyelet that is attached to the spring. Even though this specimen was heavily corroded, the flaps are visible.

The construction of these pocket balances has not changed much since 1884 - they are still being made new today with the same design and construction.

This makes these items also quite difficult to date, it is hard to estimate when a specimen was manufactured. 

The marking of Salter's pocket balances seems to have changed from Hughes to Salter over time, for example in the picture in a 1921 advertisement the faceplate is marked Salter. Of course not certain if all products changed from Hughes over to Salter, or if it perhaps varied per type or batch even.

The knot and arrow trademark was registered in 1884, so that also does not narrow it down in any way. Specimens with hollow 'pop'-rivets instead of solid rivets would however be more modern, e.g. 1950s or later. A post-war item would also be expected to have a 'made in England' marking.

All this merely narrows the date-range down to anywhere between 1884 and perhaps 1920-ish. The style of engraving on the brass faceplate is fits that range - for example the below Salter-marked specimen with a more modern-looking engraving is likely to be from the 1920s or 30s.

Impossible to date exactly, this slightly battered Hughes Pocket Balance probably dates from around 1900, with about 15 years uncertainty either way.

A proven and timeless design :-)

Silver-Reed 100 sitting on a chair

(Typed with a reproduction wheel 223 "Print Type" on a Blickensderfer - a bit blotchy from a freshly over-inked pad.) 

Ink rolls for the Blickensderfer dry out, they also did so a century ago

Old, original rolls for the Blickensderfer typewriter will still contain plenty of colorant, but be completely dry - and the typewriter will not print. Online sources mention these can be revived with WD40 - though the mix of many different (mineral?) oils would give me pause to do so. Some of the heavier fractions of WD40 tend to set into a hard 'tar-like' consistency. The lighter fractions will however be effective in making a roll functional (until they evaporate), if of course the roll is still cylindrical and not worn down in the middle.

(Looking at old typewriter ribbon ink ingredient lists, reviving an old roll might be best attempted with castor-oil, neatsfoot oil or poppyseed oil. One or a mix of these was likely used as the original carrier for the pigment on these ink rolls.)

An alternative is of course to make new ink rolls from cylindrical felt and modern stamping pad ink. However, modern water-based stamp inks dry out rather quickly too. When typing on a Blick, a new roll needs to be fitted regularly. Or of course replenished with another drop or two of ink to soak into the roll.

Maintaining proper inking of a roll on the Blick is not a new challenge. It seems that maintaining a proper inked and clearly printing ink roll was also a concern a century ago when the Blick was 'current'. For faint printing; "a dried pad can be revived by allowing a few drops of Blickenderfer Pad Reviver to soak into it":

In the very extensive user manual for the Blickensderfer 7 and 8 typewriters published by the London Blick company, the price-list mentions a bottle of reviving liquid! For sixpence per bottle:

Very curious if any of these bottles survived - and if the contents could then be determined! (Equally curious what's included in the Re-inking outfit at 2/6.)

This manual also contains a very insightful section on 'Faults' of the machine - the manivaried ways that the Blickensderfer may be giving less than satisfactory results. Reading these it reveals that many of the issues encountered today were also experienced in 1913. (And probably right from 1897 - the text samples suggest that this booklet was originally written in 1897, this being the expanded 8th edition of 1913.)

With care and attention, my No. 7 gives reasonable output. Now having read these instruction, it may actually be that the machine is already performing close to 'when-new' levels :-)

Instructions For Using The Blick Typewriters No. 7 & 8 Models - available on The Archive.

Brief glimpse at the Blickensderfer lettering in gold

The case of my Blickensderfer 7 is structurally good, but was given a dousing in creosote (?) some time in its life. This had turned the outside to a sort of 'burned black'. The fittings were also 'black' and the Blickensderfer decal could only be made out faintly in relief when glancing over the surface.

The typewriter itself is in superb condition, so decided to re-finish the case to make it match the condition of the typewriter. Starting to sand away the old layer of 'lacquer', the gold Blickensderfer made a brief appearance again before also being sanded away:

This remained covered in the 'creosote' for probably more than 50 years. (The Blickensderfer Serial Number Master List enables finding out that his machine's been in typewriter-collections since probably the late 1980s. Somehow it made its way from the US to Europe, to now be typing in the Low Countries.)

The 'burned' bit on the front-left and the flaking top areas give a good idea of why to re-finish the case - the light/bare spots were already touched by sandpaper.

All fittings were removed from the case, the rivets ground off. Surprisingly, the rivets themselves are brass and the washers holding them inside the case are copper - that's not what I'd expect where the softest of the materials would be. The riveting was done with some serious force, back around 1907 - the rivets are crumpled and bent inside the wood. 

Fittings to be cleaned and made to look good first, then figure out how to re-attach securely. And of course to get a good reproduction decal and a nice ochre color wool-felt for the bottom of the base.

Still all the de-laminating of the case and base to be fixed - one glue-step at a time and given hours to set. (Not even near to Will's levels of restoration skill, but being inspired by his work :-)

The wood itself is fine, so it has potential to all come out fine. Something to work towards :-)

First time the covers are off in a while, it shows

When it looks like this on the inside, it's been a while since anyone removed the covers.

This loose, woolly dirty dust must have taken some time to build up. It will need to wait in the shed, until a nice sunny day to give it a first cleaning in the open air. 

It'll overall need a bit of a re-build; the machine is blocked and several parts are missing. This pinwheel calculator will be an enjoyable challenge later this year - but for now kept in quarantine.

 

There probably are too many missing and broken parts for this to be viable, at least for a while - that broken lever in the image below looks 'fatal'. It will require some new castings or hard-soldering not yet practicable.

 

For now in storage it goes - a pity, because these California-made machines are fairly thin on the ground here (and it's an early one, the 49th made as serial number 70049, carriage assembly number A1007).

Astonishingly, the pinwheel assembly itself still works just fine!

Fail :/

(for now)

Designing new type wheels for the Blickenserfer typewriter

It is possible today to create new type wheel designs for the Blickensderfer typewriter! With readily available software tools and common, low-cost 3D printing technology, functional type wheels (typewheels, typing elements) can be created.

To get started with creating own type wheels with a layout and typeface of choice, install the OpenSCAD modelling software. For better design-control and a much faster rendering, get the 'nightly build' version. Enable the text-metrics function in preferences and keep the fast 'manifold' rendering engine as default. (Much faster than the latest stable-release!)

Then get the set of design-files for new Blickensderfer type wheels. (Updated files 14/3) The zip file contains the main design script, a wheel layouts-file and several example type wheel configuration files. When all files are in the same folder (directory), it should all work with OpenSCAD. 

The 3D model encoded in these files now only supports the later "Fitting C" type of wheel, i.e. a flat bar below the central shaft on the machine to rotate the wheel.

The complexity of the 3D model is kept in the file "Typewheel-design-12.scad" that is used by the configuration files. This file should never have to be edited (or even opened). Note that the OpenSCAD language is a functional language, like Haskell. There are e.g. parameters, but not really variables - overall it's a bit different from 'regular' procedural or imperative languages. Because the type wheel design is completely defined by the parameters in a configuration file, this can fortunately all be ignored.

Opening one of the example configuration files in the OpenSCAD application, a preview of the type wheel is shown next to the opened text-file. 

OpenSCAD has a preview and a render for a 3D model. The preview (F5) is fast, but not geometrically 'sound' for generating a 3D printable STL file. It is meant for a preview when editing and configuring a design script. To generate a correct, 3D printable geometry, the model is rendered (F6). This rendering does all the correct calculations and will be much slower. The model is programmed so that characters show readable in preview, but correctly mirrored and shaped in render. The preview of a typewheel generally takes ~0.2 second, but a render may take a few minutes (depending on complexity of the typeface and how many corrections added).

Naturally, the font used in the design must be available on the system. For the re-creation of an Italic wheel catalogue number 440, the italic variant of the TT2020 font was chosen. This is a widely available free font that can be downloaded and installed. Even for this straightforward type wheel, the caret (circumflex) is taken from another font - e.g. from Courier, Courier New or Courier 10 Pitch - also needs to be installed. For the catalogue-number, ideally Arial Rounded is available on the system. 

When all fonts are present and the preview is correct, then the render-function (F6) will generate a proper 3D model. This can be exported to an STL file to be printed and finished as described in an earlier post. Fitted with a newly-printed type wheel 440 R (Repro) from this configuration file, the Blickensderfer types in Italic.

The 3D model in the script is designed and optimised for FDM printing. Printed with a fine nozzle of 0.2 mm and a small layer-height of less than 0.1 mm, the result will be good enough to take the ink and make a credible imprint on paper.

The configuration files are relatively small, but still contain many options and parameters for tweaking the type wheel.

The showBoundary option toggles visual guides around every column of characters that indicate the space they have when typed on the Blickensderfer (with 10 characters per Inch). This is useful when configuring, shows when characters would overlap as typed.

The showNozzleComp option toggles the extra distortion of characters to compensate for the accuracy-limitation of an FDM printer.

This distortion adds extra width to character verticals to adjust for the diameter of the deposited filament. The ~0.22 diameter of the extruded 'string' limits the sharpness of outer radii, so there is a horizontal adjustment to the characters to compensate for this radius 'drop away'. It can be useful to show this distortion in preview, to see if e.g. details of characters are 'swamped' by this when rendered.

The layout can be chosen from one of the presets defined in the layouts file.

This file is very limited so far, but of course freely extendable to match the keyboard of any Blickensderfer. The arrangement in the file is identical to that shown in the catalogue; traversing the keyboard from top-left-half to mid-left via bottom-row to mid-right to top-right. Alternatively, the layout can be chosen from the custom set defined in the configuration file itself. This can be useful to make wheel-specific changes like e.g. using the letter 'O' instead of the numeral '0' for a particular font or to e.g. include symbols like € or ㋡ on a wheel.

Different styles of type wheel are supported, chosen with the wheelStyle parameter.

There are many parameters to modify the font. There is horizontal scaling, overall fattening (or thinning) and horizontal fattening only (to adjust for scaling). For selected characters, an extra scaling can be applied. Similarly, an alternative font can be selected for a sub-set of characters.

One of the peculiarities of the Blickensderfer is the caret character. This is rare in font-files, so the circumflex accent substitutes for this. Being a diacritic, this needs moving down onto the baseline; hence the caretDrop parameter.

In general, a clean fixed-width font will not need too many tweaks to work well. To however use a proportional font on the monospaced typewriter, many tweaks may be needed to get all characters to fit and not look too out-of-place. The preview shows the result of modifications, but needs to be manually refreshed after making edits to the file. Even a monospaced font may need extensive tweaks to get it just right, see for example the wheel 407 created with Courier New.

Making a typeface perfect for a typewheel really should be done by editing glyphs in the font-file - for example to create a "Pf." as a single character for a German typewheel. Nevertheless, the various tweaks possible in the configuration should allow for already a lot of corrections.

Most of the parameters have an explanatory comment, or at least a comment that was meant to be helpful in understanding what it does :)

The use of a fine nozzle of 0.2 mm enables printing with reasonably fine detail. It is good enough to re-create type wheels that perform very similar to original type wheels. A 0.2 mm nozzle is however small, and most FDM printers use a 0.4 mm nozzle as standard. Though less precise in printing, with a 0.4 mm nozzle it is still possible to create functional type wheels. The elements shown below were printed with a 0.4 mm nozzle.

Whilst less suitable for typefaces with fine detail, the resulting wheels are entirely functional.

The type wheel 3D-model was created especially for 3D printing on FDM-technology printers, the most common and hassle-free low-cost type of 3D printer. In principle, setting the nozzleDiam parameter to zero will create a 'clean' file that would also be suitable for printing on e.g. a resin (DLP) printer. The overhang-angles that work for FDM will certainly be good enough for DLP printing. However, because a resin-printed part is more brittle and fragile the current model may be too delicate in resin to survive actual typing. Additional changes to wall thicknesses may be essential to be able to 3D print a usable wheel in resin. These can all be tweaked in the design-file of course, the whole model is set-up parametric so it should not be too difficult to adapt.

 

An important caveat is that the critical parameters of baseline and platen-centre are best-guess estimates only! And these guesses are based on only a single typewriter! The values are 'weird', but seem to produce identical result to that from an original wheel. Please do not hesitate to share/comment/add extra experience or inputs for these key parameters.

Net result is that at least this Blickensderfer 7 now has a variety of typefaces to type with. In keeping with the originals from The Blickensderfer Mfg. Co. these new wheels are stored in wooden containers (small round boxes, widely sold as wedding-ring or jewelry boxes) with a re-created lookalike label.

With these files as starting point, it should hopefully be feasible to create more new type wheel designs for the Blickensderfer! 

More typing Blick's :-)