Upcoming Type-In and a Giveaway 1957 Royal Aristocrat!

Weapon of Choice: 1957 Royal Aristocrat.

Spring malformed and sliding around. Must trim and form new hook-ends.

Re-Install spring, not that it did any good.

“Forming” is what we call it, not “bending”. Must be patient and have a light hand on the tool.

Okay, so Aristocrats in the late 50’s had an RB prefix, so I should note that when I next fiddle with the Royal page, which will be soon. Lots of new info from parts and service manuals.

By the late 50’s, all the controls have been moved underneath the push-button ribbon cover.

Hand-set tabs under the tilt-back paper table. Magic Margin lives back there too, just like the 1940’s machines.

Updated: June 21, 2019 — 8:30 pm

9 Comments

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  1. Congratulations on your repair.

    I have a Brother Valiant with a similar problem. I have had many Royals with that same touchy problem, like one of my HHs that I have yet to put on the workbench.

    The Aristocrat will be a fine gift for some one. have fun at the type-in. I’m off to Traverse City in a few minutes to the Landmark Books Type-In.

    Have a Happy typewriter Day!

    1. Have fun at the Traverse City event, and Happy Typewriter Day to all y’all! (:

  2. It was fun following along as you tweaked on the escapement. Funny how some models seem to be intrinsically more troublesome while others rarely skip. I wonder if Royals tend to wear more easily on key escapement parts.

    Wish I could attend the upcoming Type-In.

    1. Yeah, on a Royal it doesn’t seem to take much force to tweak it, so maybe they just naturally fall out of adjustment easier than most. It’s interesting to note though that I’ve *never* had a JP-1 skip on me, no matter how beat up it was. I’ve got a 1959 Consul 1511 on the bench now, also with a skip, but I have no docs or experience with them, so it’ll be educational at best :D

  3. Nicely documented fix. I am filing this away for future reference.

  4. I have a ’46 QDL that skips a little if I use too heavy a touch, but I find it easy to adjust my typing to suit. I haven’t noticed the problem on any other Royals and didn’t realize that it was common with them.

    1. Yep, Royal Portables are notorious for skipping – however in my experience, the 1940’s ones do not skip for me while the 30’s, 50’s and 60’s ones often do. That might just be luck, but at least it’s an easy fix, if quite fiddly. :D

  5. On my 1952 QDL the little pawl (loose dog?) on the escapement rocker arm was way too low. I brought it up to where it is supposed to be. That solved almost all the skipping problem. It’ll skip if I hit a letter too hard, usually h. It will pile on opposite hand letters (h-a for example). I think piling happens when the second key is hit too soon that’s why right-left hand or vice versa will usually be the culprit. I may increase the trigger distance a bit. If I touch-type with curved fingers and lightly it is almost flawless, like playing the moonlight sonata on typewriter.

    1. The other thing that helped is putting the touch control on zero which is the opposite of what I expected. Maybe the key doesn’t rebound as hard into my finger which might react to a stiffer return so press and trigger the escapement again.

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