When life gives you a broken typewriter, fix it! 🛠

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 13:27:36 +0200

Something uneventful happened in my life again: I am on Erasmus in France when suddenly I hear someone knocking at my door. I open up to find my English neighbour holding a pretty beaten up typewriter. I take a quick look and accept the challenge.

Facts

The typewriter is actually a west-german one called Gabriele 25, by a company called Adler. That’s interesting since my typewriter back at home is the east-german competitor’s Erika #14.

Erasmus is pretty neat, but I did not expect to need a set of screwdrivers during my first month being here. Well, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a french hardware store anyways 😉

Fun-Fact: Here in 🇫🇷 many hardware stores have the word “Brico” in their name because of bricoler (eng.: to fix, to diy)

The insides 🫀

Equipped with new screwdrivers I got to work and opened Gabriele

Dear Garbriele must have stood outside for a long time because there were a lot of tiny bugs and flies inside 🤢🤮

I had to open Gabriele up in the first place because the carriage (the part that should move while typing) stopped moving half way. This was probably due to the fact that Gabriele had rested too long in “travel mode”¹, combined with a little moisture this resulted in rust.

How to fix it?

Answer: Cleaning and oiling 🛢 (aka WD40)

Hack: WD40 and candles don’t like each other (🔥)

A lot of WD40 later and the carriage was moving perfectly smoothly.

Last To-do: No typewriter without an inkband

I quickly ordered one off of Amazon² (shoutout to my university here that has some deals so we get Prime free for 3 months!)

Voilà:

One headache remains with Gabriele tho…

She has a french keyboard layout 😳

Special thanks to

Arthur (Typewriter-Finder, Proofreader)

Caro (Article-Reminder, Proofreader)

Dani (Screwdriver-Lender)

Gonzalo (Chill-Roommate)

Fabienne (English pedantic)

Travel mode is common for portable typewriters so that the damages while carrying it are reduced. ↩︎
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a local store here that sold typewriter inkbands :( ↩︎

hacks on Leander's Blog

When life gives you a broken typewriter, fix it! 🛠

Facts

The insides 🫀

How to fix it?

Special thanks to