Recent treks to the thrift shop turned up a lovely Olympia Splendid 33. Aside from vacuuming out all the dust and bits of rubber erasings it required a minor repair: the carriage was off the lifting arms. This was easily fixed with the aid of a small wrench and a jeweller’s screwdriver. I also treated the platen with a very light coating of silicone lubricant, rubbed on with a rag. Silicone seems to do wonders for platens, but should be used sparingly. This platen now has a perfect grip. It took a few days for the treatment to dry properly however, as at first the rubber was a bit too soft and impressionable – like a lot of people..
olympia splendid 33
I’ve left this machine on my desktop, the real one that is, where from time to time I like to doodle away with random musings – here’s a couple.
nathanguitars 
I hadn’t heard of the silicone treatment before. There’s always something else to learn about typewriters.
I usually treat a hard platen with brake fluid, which makes the outermost layer softer and helps it grip. Sounds like silicone has a similar effect.
Rubbing with Soft Scrub is also great to remove the hard and dirty surface.
I only recently saw this somewhere, too. The brake fluid treatment made some platens too soft, in my testing. So far these results are good, but I expect that it depends on the particularities of what rubber compound is used. I’m testing silicone lube on another platen.
“Typing on scraps”-This is upsetting…!
I will live long life.So as my recycled scraps and pencils.
Cat maybe will be mumified 😀
The part:” Scraps of paper,scraps of time” cought my attention in first place.
Trully spldndid and promising start of poem.
Ending made me upset. Bet that is my subjective feeling about your poem.Not to be taken personaly!
Have a good day .
You could repair peoples liking of poetry,not only Typomachines 🙂