I consider the Corona portable machines as pretty durable and when clean and adjusted they are trouble free. The most common adjustment I make is upper case print alignment. This nice customers burgundy example from 1934 came into the shop for a much needed cleaning, left margin bent and the upper and lower case characters were WAY off. Way, way off. Also, this machine while all pretty and shiny is thrashed mechanically. All sorts of previous bent parts, scrapes and bruises.
When I turned the typewriter over to inspect, both the plastic shift pads were totally broken apart. After servicing a kajillion of these typewriters I’ve noticed Smith Corona waffled back and forth between 1/16 inch thick plastic and a sorta fiber pad. To this point I have not seen deformed pads much less cracked to pieces.
I looked around the shop for replacement right sized plastic. Lord knows I’ve gotta ton of soft raw materials in fabric, leather, rubber, felt and cork. But hard plastic, you can hear the butterflies flap their wings. Thankfully every shop has a couple (or more) junk areas steaming with crap. Well, this time the drawer marked “more miscellaneous – rods – shafts – misc” also had remnants of circuit board material that just happened to be 1/16 inch thick!
Off to the band saw and I had two perfect little pieces ready to drill and clean up. I’m pretty sure the only one who will notice the difference will be another typewriter technician. I imagine they will probably go “Huh, who did that?”.