Forty Million Clicks

The clock of "forty million clicks". Once a minute for 55 years.

As a teenager I enjoyed finding and restoring vintage clocks. Or just tinkering and restoring anything old, especially if it was mechanical. I was fortunate to live near my grandfather throughout those years, and he was always ready for an outing to an auction to look for things like that. At a hardware store auction we found a tarnished brass Primus stove, like Sir Edmund Hillary would have used on Everest. Polished up it was used for many meals on backpacking trips, and brewing up roaring pots of tea on cross-country ski outings.

The "forty million click" clock was scored at a county school auction in the late 1950's. It was painted green, and had been a classroom clock, the kind that jumps ahead one minute at a time in response to a signal from the master clock in the principal's office, each jerk of the minute hand intently observed by the class as it crept toward the top of the hour and the end of the period. Suspecting it might be solid copper I turned it over and verified that by making a small scratch on the inside with my car key. We took it home with a $2 bid.
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A solenoid, activated by a signal sent at one-minute intervals from the clock in the principal's office, once operated the escapement mechanism.

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I removed the solenoid, and in its place installed a 1-rpm electric motor (beneath the aluminum plate). The wheel (from an Erector Set) rotates the attached lever with a bearing on the end once per minute to activate that long lever and in turn the escapement that moves the minute hand ahead. Kinda like the escapement in a typewriter. 

In the workshop I found enough electomechanical odds and ends to produce a pulse with the correct voltage once a minute to operate the solenoid in the clock, which in turn moved it ahead one minute at a time. Basically a "principal's clock simulator". While it worked fine, we only tolerated the racket for a day or so before I had it back down in the workshop. The solution was a small 110 volt motor geared down to 1 rpm obtained from Edmund Scientific Company, and a hand-crafted linkage  to operate the escapement. It had been keeping time for our family ever since.

The bearing is activating the escapement lever ...

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That's forty million and one activations. The shape of the tip on the end of the escapement lever is designed to gently and quietly operate the escapement. It was formed from a piece of aluminum by a teenage me 55 years ago, and is still doing its job. 

But some time ago the clock became erratic, and I had to pull the plug. After some forty million clicks. Due to my "typewriter problem" it has taken me a while to finally take it down to find the problem. Which turned out to be a loose screw. Once the clock was operating once again, I was going to strip and re-polish it, then re-coat it with clear lacquer. But my wife wisely suggested that I leave it as is with its forty million click patina. So I cleaned it up a bit, polished the glass, and re-hung it above the wood stove and flat-screen TV. Good to go for another forty million or so.
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Fun with a Frozen Facit - and a Rattly Space Bar

I've been having a delightful week. With my day-job consulting at a temporary ebb I've set aside the 'to do' list and given myself the gift of hours in the work shop tinkering with typewriters. It's a great pleasure to sit on my stool down there and puzzle out some intriguing mechanical issue and set one of these fine vintage machines going again. It's especially pleasurable when these successes result from connection with the internet community.

And so it was with a Facit 1620. It had arrived a couple of months ago looking lovely, the carriage sliding very smoothly to and fro, all the keys jumping up to the platten when bidden and then bouncing back into place. Just one thing - the carriage did not advance. And the space bar action was wonky. Recalling a note in a comment from Nick Beland on one of my blog posts a while back regarding the issue of the 'Frozen Facit', I fired up the garage computer and tracked down his solution, which involved application of Goo Gone to the escapement wheel and patience.

Lacking in patience, I also sprayed liberal amounts of Kroil here and there, then turned out the shop lights and let everything sulk overnight.

In the AM the wheel would still not budge. Time to get the hammer. In this case a plastic mallet applied with gentle tapping to a nail set placed against one of the escapement wheel teeth. A bit firmer tapping. A slight movement. Eventually I nudge the wheel around about a quarter of a turn. More Kroil and Goo Gone and a bit more time are applied. More work with the mallet and nail set. Is it perhaps moving slightly easier?

Eventually I can work the wheel back and forth and haven't even broken of one of the teeth yet. And then, after a couple of days, suddenly the wheel is completely free. I turn the machine over excitedly and begin tapping on the keys. The carriage advances. It advances in exuberant fashion, up to several spaces at a time. Oh - that spring I had dislodged while whacking on the wheel is still in the parts tub. Eventually I not only get the spring back where it belongs, but also get the space bar properly linked up and suddenly everything is fine. A bit of clean up of the excess solvent, cleaning and polishing of the body and case, and there is a nearly-as-new Swedish typewriter.

Except for one thing.

Although it typed fine, there was an obnoxious tinny squeaky rattle whenever the space bar was activated. Not only irritating, it made the machine feel far less than precision. I traced the racket to a linkage connection. A slyly deployed rubber band now prevents the rattle and we have a tight-feeling, slickly-operating precision typer. I humbly offer this high-tech solution to the community.

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"They just Make Me Happy" - An Adler J4 and a Chocolate Olympia SM4

"They just make me happy" is how my wife once explained her enjoyment of jewelry to me. And I got it. Whatever other rationale we invoke to explain and justify our peculiar accumulations of stuff, that's what it comes down to. This blog is about how a couple of typewriters have achieved that critical criteria, and become members of the happy face club in my office.

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Adler J4

The pictures below show the space bar at rest and depressed. The brown metal is the frame, and the shiny bits the space bar linkage. Note how when depressed the rubber bumper fits within the hollowed out plastic space bar. Shipping damage had left the bumper resting against the edge of the space bar, so that to trip the escapement, the space bar had to be pushed down against bumper.

We're looking down on the front end of an Adler J4 typewriter. While the critical parts of this well-made machine are metal extrusions, this end is formed of stamped sheet metal. The design is neither capable of surviving a fall from an airplane, as the ads for the cast iron Royal 10 once proclaimed, nor the handling of the US Postal Service. 

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Before and after sanding down and polishing the Krazy Glue repair with a succession of increasingly fine grits of sandpaper and polishing compound. Not perfect, but not glaring either. And shiny.

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Cocoon!

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My new pretty. 1959 Olympia SM4. A dash of Scrubbing Bubbles and briefly intense polishing of the case latch, and good to go. They don't get any better.

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Remington Travel-Riter and Den Bosch, Holland

This nice, compact typewriter arrived a couple of days ago, with so little cushioning around the case that I feared the worst. But not only was it unscathed by the USPS, the machine that I lifted from the carton appeared as if it had somehow just emerged via a time warp from the 1950's Remington factory in Den Bosch, The Netherlands. It is that pristine.

Mid-1950's Remington Travel-Riter. The lever above the keys on the left reverses the ribbon. The lever on the far right locks the carriage. And that's it - no touch control, no bi-color ribbon.

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I'm holding the ribbon core, onto which I hooked the new ribbon, slid the core over the cylindrical fitting on the ribbon platform, and hand-wound from the plastic spool.

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Ribbon in place, and spool covers snapped on.

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Oooo! Shiny!

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Flint hard, but otherwise unscathed platten.

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Voluptuously curvaceous

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Comparative case sizes, left to right: Skywriter, Royal Futura, Olympia SM3, Remington Travel-Writer.
Travel typewriter? Not!

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Case swag included the unused guarantee card, manual, and touch-typing workbook

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Made in Holland, you say? So we go to our go-to source for pretty much all things typospheric, and find that, indeed, Remington in 1951 built a factory in the ancient fortified city of Den Bosch (The Forest) in the Netherlands. That information gave me the excuse i needed to play with one of my favorite toys. I can get lost in Google Maps and Google Earth for hours. This morning it provided me a pleasant coffee-time journey to Holland.

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Around and about in Den Bosch, The Netherlands. The wall next to the boats is part of the original fortifications of the city.

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Clearly-marked cylcing lanes are physically separated from those for motorized traffic.

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And how odd - in Holland it appears to be unnecessary when cycling to look as though one had walked through the Lycra clothing racks in a bike shop and everything stuck 

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Here in the golden, rollin', hills of California, we think "old" is something built in the 1850's. But this brick building, called De Moriaan (The Moor), was built in the 1200's

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The building was centuries old when it was included in this 1530 painting of a textile market. See the tower in the far upper right? 

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Here's a hint.

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Dat is alles voor nu!

Sacramento's Secret

It's hidden away in the industrial heart of the Sacramento metropolitan area behind chain link fences, beneath looming grain elevators and under towering seaport cranes. Yes, Sacramento, 80 miles inland from the coast has a deepwater port. But the secret is the oasis of calm in a backwater of the port's turning basin shared by two rowing clubs and a sailing club.

Lake Washington Sailing Club

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Rowers depart as the sailors arrive.

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A thistle on the hoist, and a Lido in the water

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I've heard it said that when in a power boat you are going somewhere; when in a sailboat you're already there. 

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Not the America's Cup, but nearly as intensely fought, and so much more real

Sharlet Gets Shipshape

Leaves and spiders banished and all her bits and
pieces found and cleaned, sanded, varnished,
polished, and rubbed, she is ready to create a splash.

I wrote about our 16-foot daggerboard racing sloop in a previous post. A few weeks ago she was rescued at the last minute from being replaced by a larger sailboat. With that decision made I'd resolved to spiff her up and get her back into the water. Now her beat up daggerboard has been sanded and varnished, revealing the lovely grain of the Spanish cedar. Her rub rail has been rubbed with teak oil, and a gleaming new-to-her rudder has been fitted.

So now comes the time when resolve gets tested. A final flurry of shining, fitting, screwing, and lashing has been going on the last few days in preparation for the University of California at Davis Sailing Team Benefit Regatta to be held tomorrow. The event will take place at Lake Washington in West Sacramento, about an hour's drive out into the Sacramento Valley. With a skippers meeting set at 10 am, the alarm is set for 5:15 (shudder). Will the skipper just wisely roll over conserving energy for dealing with a stack of typewriter letter writing, or spend the day comfortably sprawled on the couch catching up on the PGA Tour? Or will he roll down the driveway in the dark, coffee in hand and sailboat in tow, to spend a day on the water?
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Sails still hold their crisp newness. At least her third set. We bought Sharlet in
about 1975

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The automatically self-stowing, multi-position and fully adjustable daggerboard keeper, re-purposed from a resin spreader, is appropriately low tech.

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Nothing but the best

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Boom vang AKA kicking strap

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Harken ratchet blocks on the main and jib sheets

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A gift from sailing friend Dave Neilsen, this lightweight fixed rudder can replace the heavy and clumsy kickup rudder
when not sailing from beaches

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Good spars, still like new after 40 years.