The Typewriter Collection No. 16 - Corona Four, circa 1925.

         

I've been after one of these babies for some time, now. I blame that blue-eyed blonde kid in "Atonement" (Dir: Joe Wright, 2007).

I love the 1920s Art Deco aesthetic of the Corona Four. I love the compact size of them. And, even though these were available in a bunch of colours, I preferred the sleek, black, Model T look of this one. It came up on eBay at a time when I wasn't looking to add to my collection. If anything, I'd been spending more time thinking about what to get rid of rather than what to add. But this one was at a cheaper price than what I'd seen them go for in recent years, so I tapped the "Buy It Now" tab. 

It arrived in its case that was missing its handle. No biggie. I opened it up and saw that the seller had crammed styrofoam packing into the type-basket. Spent some time fishing it out with my Swiss Army knife. Not just for Boy Scouts, folks. 

Fed a sheet of paper into the platen and cranked the knob. Machine made an awful scraping sound as the paper fed its way reluctantly through before appearing over the platen with some dirty black stains across the page. Yeah, I think this thing hadn't been used since that big gorilla took Fay Wray to the top of the Empire State. 

I started taking a closer look at this machine. And this is what I found;

 

Those little feed rollers were flat along one edge. Probably what was causing the paper to jam up. 'Spoonman' Bowker suggested I hunt around for replacements. Good idea. Made perfect sense. But since when did the words 'teeritz' and 'perfect sense' belong in the same sentence? 

And so, I cleared the dining table and got to work, with the help of Mr. Leatherman and Messrs. Johnson & Johnson. 

Two or so hours later;

 

 I had to remove the ruler contraption, or whatever it's called;

I figured it could use a clean anyway, and that's where I found another feed roller. This one was thinner than a pencil, but thicker than a toothpick. Oh yeah, and it was flattened along one edge too. That's what was causing the paper jamming. A scrape with a blade, some mild elbow grease with the Leatherman file and it looked about as round as it was ever gonna get. 

A little rub with some fine grit sandpaper and it was now feeding a sheet of paper through the way it did 89 years ago. Or close to it. Good enough for me.

I gave the whole thing a rub-down with some sewing machine oil. This thing now gleamed like a '21 Stutz Bearcat.

 Ribbon vibrator did what it should, after a cleanup;

Although, the ribbon has probably seen better days. Still, has a little life left in it. I think the serial number dates this one back to 1925, when my Dad was just a gleam in his Mother's eye;

Took me a fifth of bourbon to find the ribbon colour selector. The colour on it had faded like Jolson's career. Lucky I had a couple of Magic Markers and a reasonably steady hand...despite all the bourbon.

Here's the mug-shot profile. Definitely sleek.

Types pretty snappy now, but still a little rough, although the rubber feet are that in name only. Makes this a noisy one. Reminds me of the '28 Royal Portable that I got.

But the keyslugs and keytops are pretty clean;

I even gave the case hardware a light going over with the sandpaper. That old paint came away without a fight;

Now all I gotta do is make up a new handle for it. And I'm all out of belts. Actually, I could use a belt right about now. 

And I think this will be the last of the 1920s or 1930s models that I get. I've kinda' gotten used to a smoother typewriter in recent months and this one seems a little rough for long-term writing. Still, I think some new feet and a new ribbon should work wonders on it. And if I ever get some platens wrapped up to send to JJ Short, this one's rubber will get a makeover. 

Still, this Corona Four bleeds an atmosphere that's through the roof. Would make a nice display model.
Next to my Colt .45.
That is, if I had a Colt .45.
Okay, bub, I gotta run. Phone's ringing and I'm expecting a call from Clara Bow. Got a late supper date at a new place, The Stork Club, tonight.

Thanks for reading!

Friday 9/5/14 - Typewriter Arrivals, Trip 35 Re-Skinning & This Week's Wristwatch.

Friday 7:16pm  AEST

Busy week. Also, I'm a little tired, so I'll try to keep this one short. 

Last weekend

               The new skins arrived for my Olympus Trip 35s. I had an hour to kill on Sunday afternoon, so I figured I'd take a crack at re-covering the cameras. This is how they look with their old covering removed;

And this is how the covering looks. It's a faux calf-skin pattern embossed onto vinyl. I already removed one piece;

And here's the piece applied to the camera. The left-hand side still has the factory covering on it;

A little time and a reasonably steady hand is all that's required. I made some minor trimming to one edge of the covering. 

And then, onto the next one, this time in red lizard-skin pattern;

That way, there's no mistaking one camera for the other. I also got some replacement light seals for the back of the camera;

 All up, it cost me approx $25 for the two skins and light seal kit. Not bad at all, considering the kind of prices that repairers were quoting me.

I've loaded a roll of 36 exposure 200ASA colour film into the red one and started taking pics. It'll be interesting to see how they turn out after all the messing around with the focus that I did a few weeks ago. 

Speaking of lens re-focusing, that post wound up on something called scoop.it where there are a bunch of other Trip 35 related posts by bloggers from around the world. It was here that I took a stroll around and landed on a great photography blog called;

www.filmcamera999.wordpress.com

Jak, the guy who runs this site still uses film, so he's a righteous dude in my book, and he has a soft-spot for the Trip 35 camera. Some great photography on his blog. Well worth a look. 

Tuesday

          This finally arrived;

I've wanted a Corona Four for quite some time, but this one is a little rough, to be honest. I love the look of it, but I think it has sat dormant for decades. I fed a sheet of paper into it and then had to wrestle the platen knob to feed it through. And here's why;

See the thin rubber roller in the centre of the frame above? See how it has a flat edge? The paper gets caught against it when you turn the platen. I think this typewriter has sat still so long that the rubber flattened out after being pressed against the platen. Both rollers are like this.

I figure I've got two options- A light and slightly time-consuming rub with some fine-grain sandpaper to remove that 'corner' from the roller...

...or a dismantling of this section and some mad attempt at whittling down some rubber tubing until I've made replacements for them. 

I think the sandpaper option might be the more feasible one. From memory, Nat (from natslaptaps.wordpress.com) had some good results from replacing these rollers with new rubber, but I'm not sure I'd like to go to that extent just yet. 

Of course, I could send it to JJ Short one day...if I can figure out complete removal of the platen first. 

Also, the back-space keytop and symbol were missing. No problem, I just used one of the spare Royal QDL keytops and made a quick 'practice' key. I think I'll be printing out a jazzier-looking arrow on Word (wingdings) sometime soon. But I doubt I'll be able to match aged ivory patina of the other keys. No biggie. I've got some nice, cream-coloured card stock that I can use.

In the meantime, I'll give the platen a wipe-down with methylated spirits to remove 90 years of ribbon residue.

Based on the serial number (H406122) , I think it dates back to 1925. It definitely types loud and rough, but I'll see if I can get it running a little smoother. 

I have to say it's a beautiful looking typewriter and it would be a shame if I can't get it running as it should. 

In saying that, though, I'm sure a slight cull is in order. I've come to realise in recent months that I enjoy using some typewriters more than others. 

My absolute favourites are (in order of smooth and easy typing);

-the '47 Royal QDL, even with its erratic word-joining idiosyncrasy.

-the '66 Olympia SM9, which runs like it was built only yesterday.

-the '56 Smith-Corona Silent Super, with its nice, snappy typing action.

-the '45 Smith-Corona Sterling, 'cos it's rock-solid and types nicely.

-the '54 Olympia SM3, which slightly nudges out the '51 SM2 (if these were basket-shift, they'd be a lot higher up the list).

-the '55 Remington Quiet-Riter, which has a pleasant, middle-aged-spread typing action.

...My God, I think I only need seven typewriters! So why do I have seventeen? At least five of them are great to look at, such as the 1928 Royal Portable, the 1936 Smith-Corona Standard, the 1938 Remington Remette, and the 1952 Olivetti Studio. I suspect that if I replace the platens on them, they'll type and sound even better than they already do. 

Of the rest, the Olivetti Lettera 32 is not going anywhere, since it was my school typewriter that hammered out numerous assignments, essays and projects back in the early 1980s. And the 1957 Groma Kolibri cost me a pretty penny and I have no plans to get rid of it. 

Which pretty much leaves the Olympia Splendid 99, the Smith-Corona Galaxie II and the early '70s Litton Imperial. These three will probably go. And I may consider moving the SM2 as well, since it doubles-up against the slightly better typing SM3. Not sure about that, however. I think I have too many machines that don't get used.

And if I manage to snag myself a 1950s Smith-Corona Skyriter at some point, then I thin the collection will be complete. Although an early 1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe (Dreyfus design) would do nicely, especially if it types like my 1947 model.

Well, that was therapeutic. Although, I'm still slightly confused about it all.

Wednesday

              I got a text message stating that my Working with Children Check had been approved. Cool. 

Today

       Caught up with a couple of friends today. hadn't seen one of them for about four years. Time rockets along, don't it? It was good to see him and we pencilled in a breakfast for some time in the next month or so. 

Oh yeah, the purpose of this post, I was wearing the Omega Railmaster on a ZRC padded black leather strap.

All week. 

I must have been in a no-nonsense mood this week, since I stuck to one watch. I get like that sometimes. 

I love that photo of French actress Marion Cotillard, taken by the legendary Mario Testino for the July 2010 issue of US Vogue magazine. 

picture taken from http://lilmisskiwi.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/sitting-on-top-of-world.html

Her look in this photo shoot  (skin tone, hair colour & style, jawline, eye colour) always reminds me of my wife.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend, all!

Friday 2/5/14 - Red Tape, RIP Bob Hoskins, Oscar-Winning Film Performances & This Week's Wristwatches.

Friday 5:16pm  AEST

Well, at least there's one decent photo in this post. The old Nat Geo maps come in real handy.  

I heard of Bob Hoskins' passing. Such a great shame. He was a great actor who elevated the standard of any film that he appeared in. I always liked him in comedy roles. A personal favourite is "Hook"(Dir: Steven Spielberg, 1991) in which Hoskins, as Smee, manservant to Dustin Hoffman's (brilliant portrayal of) Captain Hook, provides the perfect foil to Peter Pan's arch-enemy. 

And let's not forget Hoskins as Eddie Valiant in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (Dir: Robert Zemeckis, 1988);

picture courtesy of http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/File:Who-framed-roger-rabbit-disneyscreencaps.com-4963.jpg

He will be sorely missed.

Wednesday night, I switched over to the circa 1969 Omega Seamaster Chronometer.

The dial is a little hazy and I may attempt to clean it up someday with a mixture of distilled water and lemon juice. It's a little touch and go. Might clean it up nicely, might ruin it completely. I'll have to have my watchmaker on standby, just in case. 

I sat down to watch Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" tonight. Cate Blanchett deserved that Best Actress Oscar for this film. She's in virtually every scene. Although, Sally Hawkins put in just as good a performance in this movie and it's a shame that she missed out on the Best Supporting Actress win. I haven't seen 12 Years A Slave, which garnered the Supporting Actress Oscar statuette for Lupita Nyong'o, so I can't say if hers was a more worthy performance. It was a good line-up of nominees this year, though, and I'm sure that they'll all be nominated again in future.

Still had the vintage Omega on for the start of May 2014. 

And it's now Friday afternoon. Very cold out there. I have an assignment due in next Wednesday, which is fine...provided I can come up with 500 relevant words. Sounds easy enough, I suppose, but I know I'll sit at this laptop for about half an hour before anything coherent and pertinent begins to appear on-screen. 

Ah well, not the worst problem in the world to have. 

Anyhow, thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

A Quick Shout-Out to The Well-Apointed Desk.Com...psst, Typewriter Content.

I stumbled across this great website devoted to desk-bound workspaces and all that they entail. Ana, the lady who runs this site also appears to have a nice stable of typewriters, so I thought I'd provide a link to her archived posts/articles about them;

The Well-Appointed Desk/typewriter

And the photos are very nice, too. 

Thanks for reading! 

Friday 25/4/14 - More Library Visits, Impromptu Chicken-Sitting & This Week's Wristwatches

 Friday 6:53pm AEST

Ate a lot of chocolate during Easter. Swiss watch, Swiss chocolate, Swiss-born Bond Girl;

I thought I would travel light for the excursion into the city to the Bureau of Meteorology. I switched over to the Camy Club-Star on NATO strap with a preppy vibe...

 ...and wore it for about an hour at home before I changed my mind and switched over to the Omega Speedmaster Professional. I still had it on when I wrote the 'Sunday' entry on the Royal Portable;

Here's a page from a log-book at the Bureau of Meteorology, which had weather information hand-written into it. A few entries were written by William John Wills, who perished along with Robert O'Hara Burke during an ill-fated expedition to travel over 3000 kilometres across Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1860-1861.

Entries written by Wills were initialed with a 'W'.  People had better handwriting back then.

The Bureau had other ephemera on display as well as these logbooks from a ship whose crew tracked the weather patterns during their voyages. I took a snap because I was more interested in the typewriter font, ha, ha!

On Thursday morning, I saw one of these in the local shopping centre car-park. Back in the '80s, and even the early '90s, I used to see a lot more of them. They're a fairly rare sight these days. This is was a 'L' model (meaning 'last') from 1973. Perhaps one of the final models assembled in Germany. Production continued in Mexico until 1977, I think, don't quote me.

This model has been nicely restored. Picture taken with phone camera.

Thursday afternoon while waiting for my daughter to finish school...

INT: TEERITZ'S CAR--AFTERNOON

Teeritz and his son sit in the Toyota. Teeritz's daughter approaches the car. She's about a hundred yards away when she calls out.


                           TEERITZ'S DAUGHTER
                   Dad, Mr G******** wants me to take 
                   the baby chickens home for the 
                   weekend to look after them.

                             TEERITZ
                   Well...okay, but they'll be your
                   responsibility. I'll have enough
                   on my hands, keeping Madam away
                   from them. Hurry up, then.

I hadn't planned on taking baby chickens home for the long weekend. Once I got used to the idea, I was expecting a little shoe-box with some tiny, fluffy, yellow chicks like the ones I used to see in Kleenex ads on TV, where some little blonde girl would hold one in her hand while she wiped its beak with a soft, paper tissue. 

But no, these were a little older and larger. With long necks. 

I though they were vultures or ostriches! 

And man, did they make a mess of their box! It was filthy, so I went out and got another box and spent half an hour cutting it down and reinforcing it with tape and lining the bottom of it with replaceable cardboard and newspaper. I even cut a little window in the top of it to allow for easy viewing of deez liddle boids.

Anyway, they've been in the house for 24 hours. They had some fresh air outside a couple of times today, the cat hasn't eaten any of them, their box has been cleaned out (by me, how'd I get roped into that caper?) and they have now been relocated to the very small laundry overnight so that my daughter's room can be aired out. Despite the fact that this house isn't designed to double as a chicken coop, it hasn't been too bad. 

Have a great weekend, all. 

And Lest We Forget.

Good Friday 2014 - More Painting, Cheap DVDs & This Week's Wristwatches

Good Friday, 4:54pm AEST

Switched to the Omega Seamaster 300 midweek.

 

And the Seiko that I wore while painting. Don't know why the picture doesn't come up rotated correctly.

And it's gotten a little chilly this afternoon. Sun's out, but there's an icy breeze blowing. Time to get indoors and stay indoors. Good Friday or not, it's pizza night tonight.
Yippee!

Have a safe and Happy Easter if you celebrate it, have a safe and happy weekend if you don't!

Thanks for reading!

Re-Focusing The Lens On An Olympus Trip 35...Serves Me Right For Messing With It In The First Place.

I decided to tackle this repair job.

I had already succeeded in recalibrating the lens on my other Trip 35;

...and the subsequent photos that I took turned out great. The focus issues were sorted out, but I was still getting some reddy/orange light flare in the upper corners of the photos. This was perhaps due to my having peeled off the original black vinyl covering. Removing this covering exposed the seams in the metal body of the camera where light was possibly getting in and hitting the film. I re-covered the camera temporarily with double-sided tape and some light blue plastic, but I wasn't too thrilled with how the camera looked. However, the photos came out well and that was the main thing. I'll be ordering some exotic-looking leather skins for these cameras in the next week or so.

Anyway, back to the main story of this post. The newly-purchased Trip 35 developed some looseness in the lens assembly. I had searched the net for info on how to retighten these lenses and landed on a great tutorial;

Olympus Trip 35 Shutter and Aperture Repair 

This tutorial, by Kuljit Athwal, explains how to partially remove the lens in order to adjust three small screws beneath it. It was a painstaking process for me, since I've never taken a screwdriver to a camera before. Athwal's article provides a link to another article to do with repair of the light meter system and removal and cleaning of the aperture blades of  these cameras;

Olympus Trip35 Illustrated Repair Instructions

By referring to these two tutorials, I was able to tighten the screws holding the lens together. HOWEVER...I forgot one crucial step which involved making note of the main lens unit's position BEFORE fully unscrewing and removing it, dammit to hell!

And, as an exercise in further stupidity, I grabbed my first Trip 35 and took apart the lens of that one to see if I could copy its configuration for my other one. In refitting the lens, I unwittingly wound up twisting it about an eighth of a turn. This was enough to throw the lens out of focus, as I found it on the next roll of film that I had processed. 

And so, using the above tutorials, plus this one here;

Re-Focusing The Olympus Trip 35 Camera Lens 

...I was able to get the lens back into sharp focus. But I didn't document this process. So, in the interests of material for a blog post, here it is.

Okay, first, I needed something large with bold font. I would need to view this through the camera lens while holding the aperture open. I cleared the dining table and positioned the book, a large hardcover featuring Bond film posters;

This graphic would be sharp enough to help me adjust the lens. Next up, I used a small piece cut from a plastic shopping bag, and a small rectangle of harder plastic cut from an empty DVD case. These two items need to be taped against the film rails where each frame of 35mm film would sit if the camera were loaded. Like so;

Whatever you use, be it plastic or paper, it needs to be opaque or frosted. I thought about wax paper, but it seemed too opaque. Perhaps tracing paper would have been the better option, but I didn't have any in the house. So plastic would have to do. The piece of DVD case is to ensure that the plastic sits flat.
Next up, The lens bezel needed to be removed so that I could adjust the lens element. This bezel is held in place by three little screws;

Which came out easily enough, but I made sure not to unscrew them fully. They are very small. As it was, I was wearing my late Father's old pair of bifocals. Man, my eyesight's not what it used to be. 

And now, the top section of the camera needed to be removed. You may recall that I asked recently for suggestions regarding the removal of some stubborn, tiny screws;

Olympus Trip 35 Repair Coming Up...If I Can Just Undo Three Little Screws.

In the end, I dabbed one screw with a tiny droplet of WD-40 and then used brute strength. Burred the screw slightly, but it came out okay. Once the top section was off, it looked like this;

 

 And now, the tricky part. I had to gently place a screwdriver against a notch in the aperture release cog (for want of a better term) while pressing down on the shutter release. As the shutter is pressed, the brass cog spins just over 180 degrees. This is what causes the shutter to open when a photo is taken. It all happens in the blink of an eye. By holding a screwdriver against the brass cog, the idea is to control its spin and freeze it halfway so that the aperture remains open and you can look through at what the camera lens 'sees'. If the lens is out of focus, you'll be able to see it.

Here's how the set-up looked. Excuse the sideways photo. I rotated it on my pc, but Blogger had other ideas;

Anyway, you'll notice that the book has been placed upside-down. The image is inverted once viewed through the lens. So, I set the focus ring on the camera down to its shortest distance- one metre. Then, I positioned the book one metre away from the camera's lens. All set.

Now, the fun part. You need three hands, ideally. One to hold the screwdriver, one to hold down the shutter release, and one to adjust the lens from the front while you look through it from behind. Luckily, I've had years of practice with holding small screwdrivers and tiny parts from my time selling wristwatches and removing links from their bracelets.

So, I was able to hold down the screwdriver with the index finger of my right hand while holding down the shutter release with my right ring-finger. This left my left hand free to adjust the lens. To play it safe, I had my loupe held in place by my right eye as I looked at the opaque sheet of plastic and saw;

Admittedly, I had a few shots at adjusting it. I even took a break and applied some eye drops. I wanted the bullet-top and the lipstick-bottom to look sharp. However, the upper-case 'D' showed that it was adjusted well-enough. Once that was in focus, the bullet and lipstick looked sharp too. The real test, of course, will be running some film through the camera.

Which I loaded yesterday. Hopefully, they'll turn out fine. The only roll I had was one with 36 exposures. Could take me a week or two to use it up.

As far as 35mm rangefinder cameras go, the Olympus Trip 35 is like a Volkswagen Beetle. Renowned and well-known, reliable, and gets the job done. In production for seventeen years, these were a great point-and-shoot camera that produced very good photos. You could spend fifty bucks or so and get something like one of those plastic Holga cameras that the Hipsters are into, or you could spend a little bit more, or a little bit less (prices vary) and get yourself a Trip 35. 

If you do, it's worth saving the three links above. If you encounter any issues, these links will be life-savers. 

I should give the authors of these links a special shout-out, since their articles saved me some major headaches.Thanks again!

I look forward to getting some snaps with this camera to see if I've adjusted the lens correctly. The other Trip 35 works fine, but needs some replacement skin, which I'll order soon. May as well jazz these cameras up a little. 

I'm going to take a look at the cameras that I have and maybe thin out the collection a little. I have a Nikon EM that I rarely use since I got an Olympus OM-2n a couple of years ago. Same with the 1950s Voigtlander Vito B rangefinder. Now that I have Trip 35s, I don't really need the Voigtlander. Nice looking camera, though.

Still, after three or four months of aggravation, five rolls of film and two previous failed attempts at fixing these cameras, one of which was perfectly fine before I touched it, I figure I'd better keep the Trip 35s. 

Both of them.

Thanks for reading!