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Corona Flattop Portable Shift Pads

April 10, 2020 By Paul

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.

Example of brown shift pads (fiber type)

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!

New green shift pads.

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?”.

 

Filed Under: Typewriter

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We repair any typewriter, at any time. We love to refurbish these machines to working order so they can do what they were meant to do — type!

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245 4th Street, Ste. 503
Bremerton, WA 98337
paul@typespec.com

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  • 1970 Olympia SGE35 Electric Typewriter – For Sale $325
  • 1938 Underwood Universal Portable – For Sale $325
  • 1935 Corona Junior Typewriter – For Sale $525
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About Paul Lundy and Mr. Montgomery

Bob Montgomery, passed away September 10, 2018 at 96, had been repairing typewriters for decades. Paul Lundy purchased the business and may be the … More...

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