Thoughts on Typewriter Parts Supplies and Trading

Weapon of Choice: 1946 Royal Quiet De Luxe #A-1218244

Goodies from The Type Space! :D

A Quiet De Luxe differs from an Aristocrat mainly by the amount of sound padding panels it has. For some reason, this QDL had lost all of it’s panels, so I’ll replace them with fun red felt.

Weapon of Choice: “Cougar 6Y”, 197x Smith Corona Cougar #6Y827279

I took down 6Y much farther than was needed to get the rocker plate out, but as it’s a parts machine anyway now, I figure the parts may as well be pre-disassembled.

Cougar/Corsair (and maybe even Skyriter) Escapement Rocker Plate.

Updated: March 24, 2022 — 2:11 pm

16 Comments

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  1. Hmm. If someone leaves a comment on one of my TWDB galleries and I don’t receive a notification, it’s more likely than not that I’ll NEVER see it. it’s not as if I’m regularly trolling my fifty-plus galleries for comments; some of my galleries I’m sure I’ve never revisited at all!

    However, I see that my profile includes an email address I entered when I registered (a fact I’d long forgotten). I’d remind people who offer parts that they should include an email address in their profile so they can be contacted.

    1. You don’t look at the TWDB front page once a day? All galleries with new comments pop up there, and you could easily catch any new comments. That’s all I do. (:

  2. When I first discovered the Typosphere, I was under the false impression that the majority of participants elected to typecast their written ramblings, either in whole or in part for consumption by others. Of course I would come to realize first hand the amount of extra time and effort this takes, so I don’t hold it against anyone that chooses to forgo such steps. But if ever there was a case to be made for doing so, the output of Cougar 6Y would be it. Sad, tortured and beautiful all at the same time.

    If a mere picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a picture of many hundreds of hard fought, tormented, janky words then worth? Long may the spirit of Cougar 6Y live on through other machines well into the future.

    1. Mostly I use typewriters to talk to myself. Don’t we all?

  3. Nice work on the QDL! Do you have a pattern for the felt, or do you wing it?

    Regarding the parts trade: It would be great if we can spark the parts market outside of Facebook (I’m not a fan of that company) and ebay (which is rife with key choppers). I hope TWDB, or the typewriter board, or something else can fill that gap.

  4. I’ll raise a glass to Cougar 6Y. I recently dismantled a parts Safari that somebody gave me for free at Herman’s – and I felt weird about it, a bit remorseful for tearing into this parts machine. I wanted to pull the little star-shaped bearing pinions which *seem* to have remained unchanged in Royal portables from the 1920s to 1960s to see if I could reproduce them using scanning, Tinkercad, and laser cutting. I’ve decided that I’m going to put the Safari back together and fix its problems after I finish fabricating working pinions for another machine. Fingers crossed that I am able to reproduce working bearing pinions – and that I’ll be able to get the Safari back together.

    1. Best of luck on your pinion printing project, that’ll be a handy one to have a source for (:

  5. Your typewriter blog makes me happy! :-)

    1. Excellent! I can aspire to no higher goal (:

  6. Ted, it just occurred to me looking on the TWDB that “In my collection – offering parts” could be just “In my collection – parts” that way if you had a typewriter in your collection and you were looking for parts, or you had a non-working machine that you *might* use for parts should you find a working model with a few parts that could be swapped over… what do you reckon? ;)

    1. ambiguity in meaning is undesirable. I suppose if you want to state a preference for your desire to find parts for the machine, you can always do so via the description or a comment. I would think though, that if you mean to keep it in the “alive” column, you’d man up and classify it as just “In Your Collection”. :D

  7. “In my collection – For parts”?

    1. I would still contend that ambiguity of intent is undesirable. If you file it here, the implication is that you are offering rescue to others. (:

  8. Would you consider providing the patterns for the felt cutouts?

    1. I just traced them from the inside of the machine and cut rough. It’s not brain surgery (:

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