Imperial B - steampunk machine
I think I saw this machine at first from profile view, on Robert Messenger blog and I instantly fell in love with how awkward and steam-punk it is. Rounded keyboard, interchangeable type-module, crazy ribbon routing - all these were a promise of interesting mechanical dead-end, my favorite type of typewriters.
The one I finally managed to find came damaged due to negligence of proper packing it for shipping. Quite common story for many collectors, I’m afraid. The screw holding escapement pawls got sheered due to a knock onto the carriage (presumably) and the carriage was stuck.
Removing the type element (keyboard with type basket) is done by simple flipping of two catches and pressing Figure key.
To remove the carriage one needs to remove one screw and lift the horizontal bar where bell and type guide are residing. After pressing Figure button (to increase clearance between the carriage and the frame) the carriage can be removed towards the right.
So there is my escapement, hanging sadly in pieces.
Rough cleaning first - disassembly into three main modules.
Platen could not be rotated since paper rollers melted and glued themselves onto the platen. They sat probably in the same position for a century. I cut them off to free the platen.
Remaining part of escapement screw was sitting inside the frame. Luckily it had a bit of the thread outside so there was something to grip, otherwise I would need to drill it out and possibly tap a new thread.
To gain access I removed horizontal bar entirely.
Screw-rests removal went fine. Assuming I have all escapement parts (didn’t found any more metal pieces laying loose in the package) I figured how it was put together.
Witness marks from the rounded separation brick and oval key-hole help the investigation.
What we needed then was a new screw. The original one has imperial thread (of course) and was roughly 12mm long. Very important thou is the shoulder which allows the lower, loose dog, to glide thus allowing the carriage to move by one “click”.
Luckily I had a screw with such thread, leftover after disassembly of some derailed Remington standard. I could modify it to match the original screw and put back the escapement into one piece. It should look like that:
With that dodged I moved on to proper cleaning and then oiling the machine. The only place I needed to add oil were carriage rollers - their bearings were dry and noisy. Cleaned and oiled with thin gun-oil they came back to life.
Type basket assembly then. It had the leather type-bar rest placed strangely.
This thick piece of leather has three springs attached.
Judging by cutouts on the side and how these springs are placed I figured it belongs to the top part of the piece.
Key-legends are yellow but originally they must have been white - it is just paper which aged. Key-tops are made of glass, not celluloid. The highest row of letters has key-legends damaged by oil ingress - they are legible but not nice and would quality to be replaced.
Unfortunately key rings are not the simple press-fit or tabs type but they seem to be crimped upon installation.
I don’t have a tool to mount them back this way so I don’t attempt to remove them. Instead I just clean them from all grime accumulated.
The carriage then. Disassembly is easy and straightforward. I document each step, just in case I mess up later on.
Paper rollers were shot. I removed their remains and fabricated new rollers.
A small detail - here apparently they removed a bit too much metal from the paper-rollers rod. A tiny bit really. The machine would work perfectly well anyhow but they added a tiny shim of the same diameter to fill up the space. How cool is that?
It reminds me a story of a guy who worked on an exact replica of a sailboat. He was making a copy based on existing but derailed hull. He wanted to experience the feeling the original owner had when he got his boat delivered to him by Herreshoff.
At some point the builder found that original shipyard had cut a piece too short and they added a shim, to cover for the error. It was not visible as it was deep inside the structure. Natural thing would be to correct this error when building the replica but no: the guy replicated that, too, for the sake of originality.
Back to business: the platen. Apart from rests of paper rollers melted into the surface the rubber was petrified and damaged. I was also rotating around the core, yielding the platen unusable.
After recording the original diameter I removed the old rubber, exposing a steel (not wooden!) core.
I applied new rubber coating, matching the original.
All pieces cleaned and put back together.
Fresh ribbon in crazy routing.
So how is it to type with her? Not bad at all! It is, in fact, very pleasant machine to type. Not like on Erika 5 of course but equally nice to type as with Oliver 5.
Well, I think we have a survivor!
The metal case is covered with surface rust but otherwise sound. I considered restoring it to original glory but for now I leave it in original shape. It tells a bit about the life of this machine.
Profile picture which started it all.
Controls on this machine are as straightforward as on any ancient typewriter. They are different from what we are used to but very intuitive anyhow as one clearly sees “what happens in the works”.
Paper fingers doubling as margin setting. Long finger activates the bell, too.
Left side of the carriage houses most controls.
Blue arrow below points to line ratchet release.
Black is line space selector - 3 positions.
White arrow is pinched carriage release.
Green is line advance “pinch”. Both line advance and carriage release can be pressed simultaneously in one swept.
View from the side.
Since this is a 3-bank machine there is double shift mechanism and each type slug contains 3 signs. Unique to this machine is that upon shifting it is not the carriage which moves but the keyboard (with type basket) is moving slightly backwards.
It is absolutely not awkward when typing as the shift is very small. Below photos try to show the concept.
So in principle this is a basket-shift machine! Just that the basket is firmly attached to the keyboard.
Ribbon spools sit on sides, held in place with ingenious latches. Below the latch is closed and ribbon reverse rod is pulled - this ribbon spool will now take in the ribbon.
Ribbon direction reversed (with rod pushed in) and the latch opened for spool removal.
Under the keyboard there are additional two controls: green arrow is pointing to backspace lever. White is pointing to something which I interpret as ribbon expose mechanism, probably facilitating easier ribbon installation.
When this lever is switched the ribbon vibrator is pushed outwards thus exposing ribbon guides and making ribbon installation easy.
If one types in this position the ribbon will not move back (vibrator is uncoupled) but ribbon transport is working.
Ribbon in normal position:
The side effect of this is that one can type in red - or use duo-tone ribbon. I consider this as a feature!
Shift-lock and Figure-lock is done with the same lever, with comb-like form. Vertical posts beside are shift and fig- height adjustments, similar to ones used for example on Blickensderfers.
Very interesting machine to play with and an eye-catcher in any collection. Good typer, too, if one understands that it is 100+ year old design.