Siemag Meisterin - heavy player
Relatively unknown brand, the manufacturer came to typewriter scene quite late. According to Will Davis this is the last brand to enter the market with hole new, “out of the blue” design.
We are talking 50-ties here.
My machine is Siemag “Meisterin“ typewriter (championess), top of the line, which was produced between 1953-1957 in Germany.
At the first sight you would say it is just a standard, office-size machine. On the second sight you will start to see some features which will make you curious. At least if you are like me.
Apart from being unusual as a brand the main thing which locked me was paper injector on the right side of the carriage. So far I had no machine with this feature and I wanted to take a look how it is done. No other person was willing to buy her so I took her!
I picked the machine myself - it was relatively close and the beast is so heavy that she would most certainly get damaged if shipped.
Upon arrival I instantly noticed why someone not interested in typewriters would not want to keep her as decoration. She is very heavy and she bears original, ugly color of green.
I like green, no problem, but this shade reminds me very much Soviet-era office machines. As Janne noticed - this is an “institutional color”.
Apart from ugly color and lots of dust on the outside the mechanism worked like a clock. Very heavy and authoritarian clock I would say - the action is light and very pleasant but you can feel that there is heavy machinery being moved upon each key stroke. Big Ben of typewriters.
This machine was built for very heavy usage. You feel it while typing - nothing shaky, nothing out of sync. Very best quality materials used in heavy duty construction to withstand the strain of 10 keystrokes per second!
I’m not even close to this speed while typing!
As a proper office machine it has digital tabulator on the top row.
Upon deeper inspection I noticed that the mechanism inside is pristine clean, no traces of dust or dreaded WD40. Thanks to “full-body armor” it was protected from dirt in the cellar of lady who kept the machine after her husband.
Rubber on the platen is in very good condition, still springy. Paper rollers in perfect condition, paper injector takes a sheet of paper without hesitation. Perfect!
But this color… Would it be in perfect shape I would leave it but there were a few spots where it started to show its age, wear& tear.
Inside the ribbon cover were rests of now totally decomposed sound dampening foam with embedded two strips of metal, supposedly preventing resonant vibrations.
And guess what - these strips of metal are lead! What else, right? As if the machine is not heavy enough already…
I had since long this idea to follow Richard Polt’s approach of stripping a machine to bare metal. I would not do it on a rare machine or otherwise nice but wearing an “honest patina” but this one was an ideal candidate. I just detest this color on that form!
So I went ahead and started mechanically scraping the paint from ribbon cover, aluminum cast.
It went like blood from the nose. I can tell that these guys who put paint on the aluminum knew how to do it properly: it sat well as hell. To avoid destroying the decal I attempted to remove it from the cover. It looked as if it was just held by two plastic pins on the back. Well, it didn’t - it was also glued so it snapped instantly when I carefully pried underneath. Too bad…
I decided that if I want to finish the job before retirement I need to get some help with proper chemistry. I bought the most expensive and ugliest smelling goo from proffs paint shop and gave it a go.
Left it overnight and evacuated myself from the workshop - the smell was unbearable.
The day after, when the goo almost dried, I started scraping the paint. It went much easier but the black primer underneath was still sitting strong.
I repeated the procedure hoping that next round of heavy chemistry will soften also the primer.
It helped, to some extend, but still a good amount of elbow grease was needed to reach bare aluminum. Next step was to properly wash parts treated with the paint stripper.
Work on the main body, steel cast, was much easier although equally messy.
Front covering panel, steel, presented another challenge: how to remove without damaging plastic markings and knob for color selector? The paint stripper would melt them.
Color-dots could not be saved: they were glued from behind and cracked when I was removing the glue. No big deal. Worth noticing that this machine has 4 modes of using the ribbon, unlike most which just have 3: black, red and stencils. This one has also middle selection which uses the middle of the ribbon so if one uses monochromatic ribbon it will last even longer!
Removed mechanism for ribbon selection to proceed with paint stripping.
Stripped and cleaned parts went into next phase: polishing with fine-grit paper and polishing sponges. My desired look is brushed-steel, Airstream-like finish.
To proceed further I needed to remove the platen, to clean underneath it and to get access for paper table. This prove to be a challenge - I’ve never worked on such machine. Some screws were so well hidden that I could not find a way to dissect this assembly at first.
Finally I got access.
Paper rest was bent.
Fixed easily by forming the stop-tab.
Paper table is held in place by several stop-rings, holding it in proper alignment so it rests just above the platen.
The carriage assembly free for cleaning and inspection!
Paper injector mechanism visible after removing the carriage side panels. Scale was bent and not visible, I will form it back upon re-assembly.
Dusting off the mechanism followed. Bottom shows heavy-duty pulling slabs for decimal tabulator.
Serial number is placed on the bottom, under space bar position. I might run it against Typewriter Database one day.
Rubber feet were busted - no wonder, bearing so heavy machine for 70 years.
As this whole project is an experiment I decided to make new feet from synthetic cork. It is really more rubber than cork so why not?
Nice thing with this material is that one can use wood-working tools to form it.
Cavities for rectangular washers chiseled at the bottom.
Original rubber feet were probably 1 cm lower but I decided to make mine a tad higher. The machine will be used on a table I made, we stand in front of it to type so little heightened machine makes typing more comfortable.
I can always cut them shorter if needed.
After polishing all metal panels, cleaning and re-assembling the machine came the last part - cleaning key tops.
Exposed bare metal might start oxidizing so I waxed the whole machine with Fulgentin.
Lastly I needed to do something with the broken Siemag-logo on the ribbon cover.
I decided to substitue it with wooden inlay, with aim to slightly warm-up otherwise very industrial look of the object.
I could have used veneers and just cut them with scissors but I wanted to add bulbous logo to match 50-ties esthetics of the machine.
Trying the shape fit in the cavity before round the edges.
And there we are - done!
Mounted monochromatic blue ribbon, to fully take advantage of triple-position ribbon selector.
Ready for service!