Remington Rand Model 5
This beauty will go to my close friend for Christmas. I hope that he - or his kids - will find it useful in their creative pursues.
Apart from broken line-advance spring - and tons of dust, dead spiders etc - this machine had no problems when it came to me. Usual pain of hard platen is not present here - apparently it was changed not long ago (a few decades maybe?).
Paper rollers had no flat spots so platen sanding and smoothing, to remove dents and oxidized rubber, brought back grippy action.
Disassembly process is straight-forward. After body panels are removed one gains good access to the whole mechanism. Dusting-off with brushes and compressed air was all it needed to be clean again. No excess oil, no sticky goo found inside.
And to my pleasure - no butchered screw heads! She had luck to be served by proper mechanics throughout her life.
I like lines of this machine.
Streamliner from the forties, in unusual light-gray-green color, frozen surface.
Small design details catch my eye: keyboard hardness dial.
Typebars lying flat, accelerated with Remington-style teethed wheels.
Typeface is in Pica, classic standard, easy for the eye.
Under plastic cover caps sit Remington-standard small spools, cutely marked on the top surface.
It does not have a tabulator as a custom-spaced mechanism but instead features Self-starter which is fix-set tabulator. Pressing it moves the carriage by 5 spaces anywhere on the line.
It suffices for majority of people writing letters or books.
Accountants or engineers would, however, complain.
But we can ignore them.
Handsome beast.
Typing action is smooth and responsive. Snappy and fast.
Backspace is on the right so no need to adjust modern-man behaviors shaped by computer keyboards.
Almost fully enclosed body protects the mechanism from dust and tiny fingers of curious young primates.
Panel on the back is enclosing margin settings. No-nonsense, manual setting, no “magic tabs” gizmos.
All usual and expected controls reside on both sides of the carriage.
Starting from the left side:
Carriage release - yellow arrow
Line spacing (two settings) - blue arrow
Manual ribbon reverse and rewind - white arrow
Carriage blockade - red arrow. One pulls the lever in front of angled metal pin. This engages carriage release (thus protecting escapement) and actuates little catch which goes into notch in carriage rails, thus blocking the carriage in the middle position.
Clutch release for step-less line advance (line memory reset) - green arrow
Right side of the carriage:
Paper release - green arrow. Here in “release position”
Carriage release (repeated) - red arrow
Right platen knob - blue arrow
Ribbon reverse and rewind - yellow arrow
Left side of the keyboard houses margin release (green arrow), shift (blue arrow, also on the right side of the keyboard) and shift-lock (or CAPS-lock in modern terms, red arrow).