Contre-jour crackelure

So, now it works can I fetishise the SM4? The crackelure finish really chews up the light and scatters it around in way a gloss enamel finish never could – and chrome trim gives twice the shine.

All work and no play

After a week's neglect, I revisited the misaligned lowercase on my Olympia SM4 with the same hopes I might harbour returning to a baffling crossword clue. 

The upper and lower stops for the carriage's vertical travel (see earlier post) were so hard to reach, I decided that their adjustment shouldn't be the solution to fixing the unusefully large amount of play problem on an otherwise pristine Olympus. 

There were two sources of to-and-fro play in the carriage that I could see. One being the (unfathomable) shifting linkage, the other the bearings and the tracks the ball-races run along. I unclipped the carriage strap and spent a few minutes running it from side to side to see how the play might be eliminated. I'd assumed the two rails were part of the same pressing but when I got my magnifying glass out I could see that the rails were separately mounted and that the rail on the keyboard side showed a tell-tail knurled surface beneath one of the screws. An adjustment slot? Could be. After slackening the screws at both ends of the rail, I pushed each rail away from the other as far seemed practicable. I'd guess somewhere between 0.5mm and 1mm. Then I retightened the screws, adjusted the back rail stops (at bottom, see photo) and checked that the carriage still ran freely under ts own weight. It did and it worked! A few lines of type showed legible descenders on the lowercase where previously they'd been faint ghosts. The seven eighths is joy to behold!

Both photos taken under a desk light, typing not scanned. PS: The slow bike ride happened - I lost - and I didn't suffer the indignity of the knobbly knees competition.

So, if you find yourself with misaligned lowercase on an SM4 - maybe the above will help. I hope so. And thanks again to Robert and Mike for their helpful suggestions. Sometimes it is good to walk in the wrong direction before arriving at the destination.

Olympia SM-4: status update

Lowercase sorted! Caps now a little out of alignment - but liveablewith. Now worth every one of the 499 pennies paid. Featurette coming soon.

Naming the parts #2

Top tip for Dan: halve paper costs - type on both sides.  
(After Ignacio Uriarte)

Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee's bucolic growing-up novel, Cider with Rosie was one of the set books in English Literature in secondary school, along with Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies and the poems of Auden and Sassoon.

His Corona 3 looks like an early right-hand shift only model. The price goes to show how much provenance adds to the amount people will pay for what's generally a £25-£30 secondhand machine.