I found this ancient Royal 1 that was in terrible shape cosmetically, but upon inspection I wagered that it was fixable, so I bought it. Liberal applications of Deep Creep penetrating oil helped free up many sticking parts, along with some elbow grease and a wire wheel on my Dremel to remove the surface rust. There were two broken parts; the advance lever linkage and the “ear” of the yoke that limits the travel of same. I made a new link from a piece of aluminum, which fixed that issue. The ear proved to be unnecessary. I took off the platen and all the cover plates and did what I could to adjust the inner gears and so on. The spring motor needed a string and winding, which had to be done by winding the thing up and fastening the cord to it. The engineers designed a spring winding mechanism, but I was unable to free up the rusted set screw that locked the winding shaft. Other than that, the thing still works!
I glued the rubber sleeve back onto the wooden platen shaft, and saw that the shaft had been stamped with the date Aug 19, 2012. By the serial number this was the 77,879th of these made. They started production in 1906 and it increased yearly by large leaps. The machine weighs exactly 10kg, and the frame is made of heavy plate steel that is almost indestructible. I put a new spring on the bell, which rings brightly now. All in all this is a very impressive unit, and a testament to the skill of the designers and builders.
I kept notes about the process in a notebook I had, in which I had previously made notes about an interesting book called Fermat’s Enigma, about the history of mathematics. Hence some ruminations on that, typed on the “refurbished” typewriter.
nathanguitars 