The first bit of this particular CROP is a bit discolored, as you may or may not be able to see, but I think it's OK further in. I may just pass these off to my little nieces to use for coloring (we had a lot of fun with continuous feed paper when I was little--great for making your own "film strip"), but I had to try!
Here's the ink. Nothing too fancy, but it's not available anymore. And I do like the brightly colored (if plain) packaging!
No typewriters today, but you know, I'm kind of glad of it. If I see them, it's hard to walk away, and I still need to pare down. It's fun having some variety, but I have that already. And really, there isn't much that can top my current little group of keepers. That's rather a nice feeling. If I found a pica Hermes 3000, all bets would be off--I've said that before. But I'm awful blessed.
Oh, and during the car ride to and from and here, there and everywhere, I was listening (over and over) to The Innocence Mission's "Befriended," which is available from Amazon's MP3 downloads store, which made it way too easy to buy. This purchase was Cheryl/Strikethru's fault, as one of the tracks on that album was used as the background music for her recent video shoot of Ace Typewriter. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
One more little poem--a bit out of my usual zone. Started with the prompt "electric door".
16 comments:
You made a killing on this trip. We should shop together.
Three or four bucks will definitely buy an awful lot of entertainment, if one is willing to rub shoulders with the teeming Goodwill masses on a Saturday afternoon.... I'm particularly pleased with the ink, and I wanna try at least one cartridge, if I can ever find my Sheaffer, or if I can figure out another way to extricate ink and put it into a converter another pen can use.
You've also done well with thrift shop browsing recently, I note! Pretty blue typewriters!
I never even considered the problem with side-to-side carriage motion when I was lusting after those BAROPs earlier. I kept thinking about how to get the paper to roll up after it was typed on.
Good finds!
*Wink, wink* Selectric?
Of course! It's so simple!
Well, go on, Elizabeth.
Bring home a Selectric.
Oh, gee whiz. You're right. A BAROP (or even a CROP) and a Selectric would be a match made in...somewhere. Don't tempt me!
I've yet to see a Selectric at a thrift store, though. Ever. Which, considering I have absolutely nowhere to put a Selectric, is probably a Good Thing.
Also, as I've mentioned, the hummmmm rather unnerves me. I have electricity phobias. The hummmmm doesn't help that...
Don't get me wrong, I love my Selectric, Doris, but the hum is intimidating. Sometimes the whole reason I use one of my typers is that I don't feel the expectant impatience of a machine. The silence is almost as good as the CLACK CLACK CLACK.
Oh, and using Doris with a BAROP is awesome. A four-pound roll of paper hanging from her platen bothers her not one iota.
We've talked about the sound of various typewriters before...I wonder if they do influence how we write. I've been using the old SM-9 today (Maybe three thousand words? Another short story has me by the throat...something a little more serious and personal this time...), and the sound of it rather intrigues me. It is, like Strikethru's is for her, my one and only refurbished machine, and it's quieter than most typewriters. It's clicky, but almost not. Kinda goes "SLAP" with each stroke. Soft platen, I guess. It's different. But I like it.
SM9's do have a slappy kind of sound.
Selectrics are too new fangled for me, y'all are city slickers...
I like the different typecasts in the same post. Like the poem too. We need a poet around here.
LFP and Strikethru: OK, so here's a silly question, then. I have done all my own refurb work on most of my machines, but my SM-9 is not shaping up as much as I'd like it to. How much does it cost to get one tuned up these days? Ballpark figure is fine.
Oh, wow. I literally have dreams about stumbling across old Sheaffer carts, since I have a school pen that takes them. And blue-back, too. Lucky lucky! I've been trying to convince one of my Sheaffers that it likes Lamy refills, a suggestion that it has reacted to by barfing ink all over my hands whenever I use it.
As for the metal box, I'll gladly take blame for that. I have a couple of boxes of assorted size here now, and they're all perfectly happy being opened one-handed, unlike those hokey plastic imitators. Added bonus: easily decorated with fridge magnets.
Speegle, actually, I'd be curious to know the answer to that myself. What I meant is that I purchased the SM9 as a refurbished machine. It cost...well, a good bit, even several years ago, and I'm not sure if the refurb really justifies the difference in cost between it and a lucky Craigslist find. The SG3 is also in marvelous condition, for example, especially after an eensy bit of cleaning and the fifteen dollar platen replacement. (I keep wanting to write an over-the-top thank-you note to the folks I bought it from, telling them how they changed my life ferever...but that's probably a little hokey.)
The catch, of course, is that the lucky finds can be few and far between, and for the mechanically inept like me, no amount of desire and effort is ever going to allow me to do even simple repairs. Not all problems reveal themselves immediately--some hide until you've hauled your new lovely home and played with it for awhile. And some of us have less patience than others in dealing with niggling little issues. I've given some serious thought to selling the SG-1 because it has two issues that affect daily use: if you use the margin release, it stays released until you remove the carriage and reseat it, and secondly, the ribbon direction gets mixed up or stuck in limbo unless I force it one way or another manually, usually by wedging a piece of paper in 'ere to hold the ribbon framework thing where it should be. Neither should be a deal breaker, but when I'm using it, they're all I see, and pretty though the thing is, I'm still more of a user than a collector. And I have a perfectly good (WONDERFULLY good) desktop already. (I wuv Bernard.)
Mike Clemens, if I coulda picked an ink color to find, it would have been blue-black. Definitely cool. Ooh, and refrigerator magnets? Why didn't I think of that? Betcha there are some neat writing / pen / pencil related ones out there. Probably even at Goodwill....
OK, failing that, how much do you suppose a shiny new platen goes for these days?
There is some pricing information and my thoughts on the whole process in this post right chere and in the comments that follow it. I'd say I'm glad I did it.
Aces! Thanks!
I just wanted to say that I agree, the Selectric hum is annoying sometimes. Luckily though, I got it in near perfect condition. Once I replaced the bushing it was even quieter. The selectric has tons of dampers and if you keep it in good condition the noise is to subtle to be a bother. (For me any ways. My desktop computer fan is louder.)
On the other hand if I am lucky enough to come across a SG1 or SG3 I would be all over it. The only thing I can see as an advantage of a Selectric is the lift off correcting tape and it's speed. IMO SG1 or 3 are the best desktops and would take one over a selectric any day. Though I do love Zing, it would be hard to have both. I would feel guilty of using one more than the other. (Typewriters have feelings too you know!)
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