Weapon of Choice: “Starbuck” 1964 Hermes Rocket #6027915
1974 Facit 1620 #910029
Time to make the donuts! er, or update the Halda/Facit Age List, anyway.
Weapon of Choice: “Starbuck” 1964 Hermes Rocket #60279151974 Facit 1620 #910029Time to make the donuts! er, or update the Halda/Facit Age List, anyway.
Well done, Sherlock!
No idea what an OMEF is, but I’m glad that it came in handy.
Special thanks for the “time to make the donuts” reference — I’d totally forgotten about those commercials. (It’s hard to believe that almost four decades have passed since then.)
The depth of your knowledge is impressive!!!
Cograts! And thanks again for all the work you do the the TWDB. Fantastic job!
And a detective, to boot!
Impressive detective-work!
Related to documents in the TWDB’s library, Archive.org has a copy of A Treatise on Ornamental Typewriting (1938) by Flanagan. I think it makes a lovely complement to Artyping (1939) by Nelson and could go under the typographical resources section of the TWDB library: https://archive.org/details/ATreatiseOnOrnamentalTypewriting .
(Sorry if there’s a better place to put this on-site at the TWDB! I’m still quite new to navigating the Typewriter Hunters sections of the site.)
Hi Munk, into retro computers and have since several years a none working Underwood and just recently a Facit 1620 found its way to me. Since I’m located in Sweden, it feels a bit tragic that I can’t locate a service manual for the 1620 in the country were it was made…. But I saw you commented on another typewrite bloggers site that you have the 1620 service manual that could be shared, is this available for download somewhere? The issue that I have is that the carriage wont move when typing and noticed that there was a loose spring close Carriage lock mechanism.
You’re going to want to drip a lot of solvent down the tube that the carriage runs along in the back. Those Facits were originally lubricated with some sort of biologically-derived oil that hardens over time. You have to flush all that out and re-lubricate before the carriage will move properly.
Here’s the service manual link:
https://twdb.sellfy.store/p/otac/
Seems that it’s the star wheel that is stuck and tried to carefully drip IPA onto the star wheel itself and around the axis underneath but still rock solid stuck. Not really keen on dismantling the dog bridge. Any tricks here or is it just allowing the IPA to do it’s work for a while?
keep flushing. I don’t have one, but I’ve been told it takes a significant amount of cleaning to free up that grease.
Thought I wanted to report back here about my Facit 1620 and highly appreciate the help to get the typewriter. First time for me to take deep dive into any kind of mechanical device and therefore first timer on fixing a typewriter. I ended up dismantling the dog bridge since I got no were with using IPA or WD-40 to loosen up the star wheel at. Once removed tried again with lots of IPA (only) to clean of all old lubricate and oils including my own added WD-40. Absolutely no go at all. Removed the screw which tightens the cogwheel underneath the dog wheel but still couldn’t get the star wheel to move… So finally realised I just have to use brute force so used a screw driver to gentle apply force from underneath the star wheel from multiply angels and… finally to started to loosen up and was possible to remove and clean it with IPA. Once this was done and all parts was proper cleaned and applying sewing machine oil on moving parts such as cogs and white grease for the more mechanical parts, this old Facit 1620 works really nice again. Also, when taking it apart this machine had zero dust inside so hasn’t been used much and truly was used as a spare, as it seems with accountant firm based on some papers (dated April 1994) included in the original back it came with.
Thanks for the link which will be helpful. When checking typewriterdatabase info about the 1620 since I wanted to figure when it was manufactured and based on the information on how Facit used the last digit of the year as the first digit in the serial number, 4316419, that it was built in 1974. Since it was sold in Sweden it has the Swedish character åäö. The question then remains why they then used both 6 and 7 digit serial numbers in parallel, but might be slight difference for domestic sold units and export machines. Small detail but sure there is a logic explanation to it.
Well, all we *really* know is that the lists suddenly jump several million serials in 1976, and that the new serials are datecoded rather than sequential. The people who compiled the lists did not know that the change had been made, and so just sampled some current serials on the market. Most manufacturers stopped reporting yearly manufacture numbers to the industry reporting orgs when it became an issue with import quotas and lawsuits related to that sort of thing. When exactly they switched and whether there were concurrent 6 and 7 digit serials is up to speculation.