Underwood 4-bank portable

I am a big fan of Underwood early models. This machine came to me in pretty good shape, with some minor issues. Just dirty and dusty like she was put on a display for half a century. Which may be true.

I started with fixing type basket stop pad. It was swollen (influencing imprint) and partially gone. Duane has a good video about repairing this pad, on my machine it was too damaged to rescue.

I decided to replace it with dense felt. Just to try if it would work. Plan B was making it from rubber, as original. Turned out that dense felt is doing the job alright.

Friction-fit, no need for glue. Each strike of the typearm is setting it in place.

Rubber feet were shot.

Someone tried really hard to keep them alive but it was high time to do something about it.

I made new feet from a round stock.

Capitals alignment was very much off so I took closer look on regulation screws. Turns out that even here Underwood made an effort to make carriage shift as quiet as possible. The landing pads were covered in rubber. It became black pancake after all these years and caused the adjustment to be off.

Cleaned and filled with new cork-rubber compound.

That cost me some extra time in adjusting both lower letters (base position) and capitals from the scratch but it was well worth the effort: shifting is now almost silent, instead of unpleasant metallic clank.

After the whole mechanism was dusted off I removed the platen and lightly sanded it, to remove outside oxidation. It is hard, of course, but no cracks nor dents so I leave it in place.

New ribbon can be winded onto existing spools using Underwood-proprietary ribbon winding port. Electric drill with rubber adapter is compatible with it.