My girlfriend owns an old typewriter which suddenly stopped working one day. The ink ribbon no longer moved properly when typing, so no ink was transferred onto the page. On top of that, many keys were jammed and did not come back after pressing them. In short, the typewriter was in need of care. Although I had never repaired one before, I was happy to try it out.

The Issue

A typewriter works by slamming a metal key with an embossed (raised) letter on a thin ribbon that contains ink. The raised part will then transfer ink from the ribbon to the page. A drawback of this method is that the ribbon must sit above the typing area which ultimately hides the word being typed. To be able to see the word there exists a mechanism that raises the ribbon in place right before the key hits the page. That way the word will only be shortly hidden.

The part which is responsible for that is called the ribbon vibrator. As the name implies it vibrates the ribbon up and down while typing. It consists of a small lever that is connected to the keyboard which pushes the ribbon holder up when pressing down a key. In my case it was this lever which got disconnected and thus didn’t move anymore.

The Repair

It took me some time to understand the inner workings of the typewriter (I still don’t fully understand them), before being able to locate the problem.###

When I figured out what the issue was, as stated before I tried finding a way to put the lever back in. I tried to wedge my finger in the small space but I did not manage to fix it in this angle, I had to take the whole slide off.

To get to that I had to remove the whole sliding bar which was pretty easy, a few screws, but to put it back was a nightmare. With the bar in my hands I tried to slide the lever in the small hole and at the same time I had to put the sliding bar back in place. When trying to put back the sliding bar the lever always fell out of the hold and after many unsuccessful attempts I gave up.

Second Attempt

A year later I tried to fix it again. This time I started first by looking for reference. The problem was that I had not seen the typewriter when it was working so I didn’t know how it was supposed to look. I found somebody that had a similar model but they weren’t able to find a repair manual, only the user manual. On top of that I couldn’t find any pictures of the interior of this typewriter. The closest I got was the Hermes 2000 which looks similar but is not exactly the same. But not even this model had any in-depth videos of the inner workings.

So I just opened it again, this time being able to remove a rod that was connected to the sliding bar.

It was quite dusty so I took out my used toothbrush which I use to clean everything with and removed much of the dust. Here’s a picture from the other side.

I don’t want to make this article any longer than necessary, but there really isn’t much more to say than: I simply tried slowly putting the bar back many times until it worked.

Unjamming The Keys

The last issue left were the keys. Some of them were stuck or did not return back fast enough, some didn’t even come back at all. To fix this, again, the solution does not require too many steps

I put some houshold alcohol in a spray bottle and added some vodka. The typewriter would probably be fine with pure 95% alcohol but I still wanted to play safe and diluted it a bit. Vodka is my key ingredient when cleaning anything, be it laptops, cameras or now typewriters.

I watched this video for advice on how to clean them. It’s straightforward, just spray some alcohol on the keys and then individually move them up and down.

The good thing about this typewriter is that there is just metal underneath the keys, and after that there is an opening. So all the excess alcohol will just fall down and then dry. Maybe you should be more careful with newer models that have a plastic enclosure.

On Fixing Things

Seeing the typewriter work again was very rewarding. It’s a nice feeling to bring back an objects utility. I’m sorry I couldn’t provide more in depth details on how to repair typewriters, however, one takeaway is that you should just try fixing something that no longer works. The worst that can happen is that you break it just a bit more.

(The text is faint because I need to buy a new ink ribbon).