Backstrap Loom Weaving

Hello again everyone! I am recently finished with my doctoral training and in a new job and back to crafting again. Well... technically, this post's topic of weaving I originally started as a stress-relieving activity during the height of my studies. Weaving is meditative and creates satisfying, well-ordered structure in front of you with minimal mental gymnastics. At least if you're not making any complex fabric.

"Weaving" probably initially brings to mind images of gigantic, unwieldy, wooden looms taking up half of one's living room. And indeed, if you want the height of industrial efficiency, stylistic freedom, and ease of creating different finishes and textures, that's the way to go. But I was A) poor, B) didn't have 100 square feet to spare, and C) just wanted a relaxing craft activity. So I chose to use backstrap weaving techniques:

Backstrap weaving (image by Infrogmation, GNFL license)

Backstrap looms, like the one shown above, are cheap to make, requiring only cords, straps, a series of wooden dowels and slats, and some spare lengths of the same kind of yarn used to weave. The fabric you are making itself holds the loom together otherwise. When not in use, the whole project can be rolled up and stored. While in use, the loom is held together by placing tension on the warp yarns (vertical to the weaver) with your body, leaning back and stretching them between yourself and an anchor point in front of you. Dowels then keep the yarns separated while you weave the weft yarns (horizontal to the weaver) back and forth between. As you finish sections, you partially roll them up on the bar nearest you so that the next section is in reach, and so on until finished.

I didn't start with anything as ambitious as the woman above's yard-width cloth. I started by making a simple, thin, acrylic yarn strap. Below is a third party technical diagram of a backstrap loom, followed by a photo of my actual homemade one:

(Source)

The warp threads are actually one continuous loop back and forth between the two anchor points of the loom, at the body and the far end. The warp threads can be seen splayed out at (A, furthest from the weaver) in the image. These tend to get tangled on their own, though, so to help prevent this, I made a "cross" (B) in the yarns by weaving a simple stick between every other thread, then weaving another one between the opposite threads (actual cross is between the sticks at B). This forces any tangles to resolve themselves and leave the yarns in order and well-spaced going toward the working section of the loom. To help keep the yarns spread out and untangled, tension is applied by the bar near the body (C), which is attached to a strap around the weaver's back (not shown, though notches are visible for the strap to attach). Two sticks are used here to allow the finished work to be rolled up as progress is made, without unrolling from the tension.

Then the actual process of weaving involves taking another length of yarn, the weft, and passing it through all the odd numbered yarns, then all the evens going the other way, back and forth. The weft thread is all rolled onto a bobbin (D, I used a knitting needle) so that passing all of it through the warps doesn't take an hour each time. The working edge of this piece of cloth is at (E); you can see where the weft has made it to so far. The stick right at the working edge is used to "beat down" the weft toward the finished cloth after each pass to make it nice and tightly woven.

How does the weft get between opposite yarns each pass? Well, you could thread it through each time manually, but that would be horrible. Instead, there's a system to quickly shift all the even numbered yarns up and then all the odd ones, quickly and efficiently. The odd numbered yarns are held apart by a nice thick bar (F) at the back of the loom. The even numbered yarns are then each individually tied to little strings ("heddles") that reaches down through the odd yarns, and then attaches above to a stick (G). To raise the odd yarns, the thick bar (F) is moved back and forth and up and down to well separate those yarns, while the heddle strings allow the even yarns to pass below without getting in the way. This creates a triangular space between (the "tent"). The beater stick (E) is placed inside (it is removed and replaced each pass), and flipped on its side to make the tent even bigger. Then the weft bobbin (D) is passed through. The weft is beaten down, and the beater stick removed again. Next, the thick bar (F) is pushed back out of the way, and the stick with all the heddle strings on it (G) is lifted, PULLING all the even-numbered strings through the odd ones so that they are now on top. The beater stick is put in again, the weft bobbin passed the other way. These two phases are repeated over and over again until a cloth is formed.

Above is the finished result of my first strap. If you look very closely, you can see several characteristic errors made by people who don't know what they're doing. For one thing, one end is about half as wide as the other. This is called "pulling in" and it results from not leaving enough slack in the weft thread as it is woven through the warp. When it gets beaten tight, the weft is crimped, and thus shortens. If there's no slack, this pulls in the sides of the whole cloth, making it progressively narrower. The way to fix this is to leave the weft at a slight angle before beating it tight, so that it is a bit longer than the width of the cloth, leaving room for crimping.

You can also see that at the edges, the texture changes in places. It becomes more square looking, while the middle of the strap looks hexagonal. This is because the warp yarns at the edges were looser than the ones in the middle. I didn't have even tension across my whole width. Thus, the warp and weft at the edges are about equally tight and pass over one another equally, while the warps in the middle are much tighter than the wefts, so one of them crimps and the other doesn't, leaving the hexagonal look as you can only see one of them. On the sides you see both warp and weft.  My next attempt was a lot better:

Here I was making a small patch of a twill fabric (specifically a gabardine). The first strap I made was a "plain weave", over under over under. In a basic twill, instead of having all the odd yarns alternate with the evens, what you do is pass over TWO warp yarns, then under two, then over two... Which two you pass also shifts over every time you send the weft through, like this:

Twill Weave (by Jauncourt, CC Attribution Share-Alike)

If you imagine counting off every warp thread as 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4... this means that depending on the pass of the weft, you need to variably lift all the 1's and 2's, then next all the 2's and 3's, then 3's and 4's, and finally the 1's and 4's. Four different sets of yarns need to be controlled instead of the two sets for the simple strap I made. This means that I need not just one thick bar and one set of heddle strings, but instead one thick bar and THREE sets of strings. This way, I can achieve all four types of lifted sets of strings. You can see the three different tied sticks in the photo above. This is trickier to set up, but not much trickier to weave. I'm using orange yarn for the warp this time, and red for the weft, so that you can tell them apart later.

Here's one side of the finished product (above). Notice that you can ONLY see orange. This is a "warp-faced" fabric since on the intended display side (above), you can only see the orange warp yarns. The red wefts are hidden underneath. Notice also that the cloth looks much denser and tighter than the strap earlier. Since the yarns aren't crimping as much as in a plain weave (only every two yarns not every one), more yarns are packed into a square inch than in a plain weave. This makes twills harder-wearing and popular for work clothes and jeans. The tight weave also makes twills more insulating (jeans are generally warmer than linen pants, which use plain weave), and easier to waterproof. Gabardine, the weave I made, is popular as an outer weave for raincoats, for instance.

Here's the back side of the same cloth. On the back, you can see the warp and weft about equally well. This is not the "face" of the cloth, though, so it's still called "warp-faced." Notice that the width doesn't change quite as dramatically as last time, but I still pulled in a bit from start (left) to finish (right). The tension is more even this time. The edges are also more consistent, from repetitive practice.

Next, I used a mixture of stiff hemp warp strings and soft acrylic weft yarns, and chose a new pattern: a diamond twill. This is a normal twill, but with the pattern simply changing direction in blocks. When tying the warp strings, I changed the pattern partway, and I also changed the direction of which heddles I lifted occasionally while weaving to make the pattern change the other way as well. Here's the loom set up first, followed by a diagram of a diamond twill.

If you look closely, this looks just like a normal twill but in smaller "blocks" that flip occasionally.

Again, this pattern required 4 types of yarn lifts, so a bar + 3 heddles, varying which sets of warp yarns were lifted as I went. The finished product is below, with a bit fancier finishing of the ends. You can see the diamond pattern, though it's not a consistent looking as I'd like. You can see both hemp and red yarn here, because even though it's warp-faced, the yarn is so much bulkier that this balances out the tension visually and keeps them both more equally visible at once. Notice that when I cut the bottom, it by no means immediately unravels. These cloths could definitely be cut to patterns and used in sewing if large enough.

It takes me about 20 minutes to wind the warp yarns around two pipes in a wooden board and transfer them onto the loom, then anywhere from 30 minutes to hours to tie the heddles depending on complexity and width of the cloth, and about 5 minutes per inch of cloth to weave the weft along. Next up is going to be attempting a much larger piece of fabric, like a dish towel, perhaps. I also want to try out changing the warp and weft colors across the fabric, such as when making a plaid fabric.

Much fancier and irregular patterns can also be woven into a cloth, like the shapes of animals, but this requires manually "dropping" or "picking up" yarns in violation of the background pattern as you go, and it is very painstaking by comparison to plain fabrics like these.

Let's Build an Organ Pipe!

Part one here!

In this post, I'll go step by step through my process for creating an (unpainted) PVC organ pipe! An organ pipe has two parts: the resonator, which is most of the length of the pipe as a simple empty tube, and the fipple, which creates oscillations.

THE RESONATOR 

The resonator takes vibrations (or perhaps more accurately, oscillating air vortices that I don't entirely understand) from the fipple and resonates at a fixed, controllable wavelength, allowing specific tones for music. Each pipe is going to produce one fundamental tone, just like individual strings in a piano. A single pipe will create several other tones at once when sounded, equaling integer multiples of the fundamental frequency (harmonics). The smaller the pipe, the more prominent the harmonics, but the fundamental is always the strongest.

Here are some different harmonics fitting into a single pipe (top three waves) and a fundamental of a longer pipe (bottom), with distance from midline being relative min and max pressure for each one:

However, less so than composers, we don't need to concern ourselves much with harmonics for building the organ. The pipe will sound like the fundamental frequency when you play it. So what matters more for us is the bottom of the image above: When you make a longer pipe, it will naturally resonate at a longer fundamental frequency. Longer waves are heard as lower tones. So by making different length pipes, we make different notes.  One half the length of pipe = one octave lower, and other notes vary by even logarithmic steps in between. In other words, human perception varies logarithmically with frequency.

So the resonator, at the end  of the day, is just an empty tube of the correctly calculated length. I'm making mine out of PVC pipe. For tuning purposes, I also have slightly larger pieces of pipe on top that can slide up or down to make fine adjustments to the lengths for tuning.

Middle C is an open pipe of about 2 feet in length, as a point of reference. A concert tuner of the A above middle C at 440Hz is about 1.28 feet long. 

Closed pipes (with a stopper at the end) have twice as long of waves, roughly, because the wave has to "reflect" the length of the tube then back again from the fipple. A closed pipe sounds one octave lower than it normally would, so middle C would be about a 1 foot long closed pipe. This is useful if you want to fit big pipes in an apartment building.

THE FIPPLE

The fipple is the vibration producing part of the pipe. I'm going to be routing air to my pipes by plastic tubing, so it needs to convert a stream of pressurized air from a circular tube into a consistent vibration. The fipple is much harder to make than the resonator.

Briefly, the concept of a basic flue pipe fipple (meant to sound something like a flute) is:

1. You somehow shape incoming air into a laminar air flow (a flat, non turbulent sheet of air).
2. You get that flow to pass right into a thin knife of rigid material, which will then vibrate.
3. The vibration resonates in the resonating chamber.

The way we make those things happen is by building something like this:

The pipe (red) has a cap on the end (black) with a hole for the air hose (green). There's also a plug in the pipe (orange). Air comes into the cavity in the back and has nowhere to go, except for a narrow section of pipe cut away at the top. This forces the air into a sheet, which passes over and under a knife shape cut in the pipe (red also). This vibrates, which then causes resonation in the pipe (left off the edge of this image). Again, I think it is more like oscillations of swirling air systems in a much more complicated way than just vibrating, but that's close enough for me to build it.

So without further ado, let's build it! We begin with a PVC plumbing pipe:

First, we need to cut a notch out of the end. The width of the notch is related to the diameter of the pipe, something around 2/5 the diameter. The depth of the notch depends on the system you're using for a cap. I used this tool here, a dremel with a grinding fiber/ceramic/something wheel:

Here's the notch cut out:

Then I used a much wider grinding stone (seen below), 100 grit sanding drum (not shown) and finally manual 220 grit sandpaper (not shown) to grind a sharp, gradual "knife edge" on the inside of the notch. Grinding stone:

Knife edge after all the dremeling work:

Knife edge after hand sanding:

We need a laminar sheet of air now. I achieved this by using the thickness of the PVC pipe wall itself as a guide for a sheet of air. So I need to block off the inside diameter, AND the outside diameter. The inner diameter is blocked using this section of a solid plastic dowel rod:

The corner is sanded down to aid aerodynamics (the air needs to be smoothly guided toward the knife). The plug fits into the pipe snugly. Notice how the pipe walls stick above the plug, so that when the cap goes on later, there will be a thin slice of opening:

A hole is drilled in the middle of the pipe cap. This is where plastic tubing will go to deliver the air supply:

And finally, the cap is attached. If you look closely, you will be able to see the thin slice of empty black space in between the plug and the cap nearest the camera. This is the guide for the airflow to make it into a sheet of air. It will then pass right into the knife edge, creating the musical vibrations, which resonate in the remainder of the organ pipe:

Again, here's the schematic now that you've seen the real thing:

NEXT TIME

In the next installment of this series, I will explain how the air system works, and I think I'm going to actually try out a new idea, different than my original plan, for how to activate air flow to individual pipes. I will try experimenting with homemade electric solenoids, versus the alternative of manual springs and levers and things.  If the electric version works, then the whole organ could be played either manually OR by computer program, potentially!

Making a Homemade Pipe Organ

One of my long term crafting projects is to build my own working pipe organ. Do I know how to play the organ, you ask? The answer is no. No I do not. Why did you ask that? I hardly see it as relevant.

Moving on, this will be a "positive organ," or in other words, a small desk-sized one. In the layout below, the entire table there is about 4 foot by 2 foot, and the largest pipes are 2" in diameter and would just barely clear a typical apartment ceiling (top pipe in the splash image above). The color coding is for commercially available widths of PVC pipe, my primary building material:

I don't remember at all what made me interested in this project, but hopefully it will be capable of creating wonderful art when it's all done, whether or not I'm the one making art with it!

Overall, a pipe organ requires the following components, and thus these are the major areas of the project:

1. A frame of some sort -- this can be anything from a modified table to a huge gilded architectural wing of a building. In my case, my most important design consideration is portability - I am keeping the organ small and desk-sized, and I want to be able to break it down for transportation.
2. A lot of pipes -- My organ has five octaves (61 pipes) in flute-like sound, give or take a few pipes possibly for different harmonies at the end(s). One octave is a 2x difference in pipe length. You can "cheat" your way for one bonus octave without longer pipes by making ones with stoppers in the ends which effectively doubles the virtual length. Thus, my organ will have pipes from about 4 foot to 6 inches. They also get narrower as they get shorter. I am planning 2-3 additional redundant octaves in something much more fun. Tentatively, "bubble" sound. I.e. bubbling water, but in specific pitches. Because reasons.
3. A keyboard (called a "manual" on an organ). This doesn't have to have a key for every tone, although it is convenient and mine will. The color coded keys above are ones that would be able to play either/both bubble and flute pipes, based on a pull-control knob (a "stop").
4. A "wind" (air) supply, including some sort of fan or bellows, as well as a regulating reservoir to control for consistent pressure despite however many keys you are playing at once. Without a regulator, an 8-note chord would play 8x more softly than a single note. We want consistency, which requires building up a reserve of air pressure. i will use a squirrel cage electric fan and a box with a rising, weighted lid for a reservoir.
5. A windchest, which is an interface that takes in the main air supply, and uses linkages from the keys and any number of control stops to distribute wind to the appropriate pipe or pipes.I plan to take advantage of plastic tubing to greatly reduce the mechanical complexity compared to traditional church organs. Basically all I need are some small boxes and flap valves for each key, and some airtight gaskets, and that's it. Possibly one sliding board to convert between flute and bubble pipe voices.
6. Finish. Most of the pipes in my organ are going to be made out of PVC plastic plumbing pipe, so paint is a high priority to hide that fact. A tentative paint scheme is something like this (the arrangement of pipes here is not realistic, just slapped on the image):

(Possible paint scheme of my organ. An air pressure reservoir is on the floor. 

The tube sections on top of the pipes are tuning slides.)

In my next post for this project, I'll dive right into the design and airflow diagrams for individual organ pipes, which are all homemade here, mostly out of PVC.

In the meantime, here's a sound clip of the four pipes from the splash image. In order from the top: 1,2,4,3. Sorry, the highest note is a bit wheezy and cracks its voice--it's not the pipe, it's just that I can't play it as hard as it is designed for without blowing out the audio on my microphone. At normal strength, it is crisp.

HELPFUL LINKS

I'd like to extend deep thanks Raphi Giangiulio, who I have never written or talked to myself, but whose website about homemade organ building has been my #1 go-to resource for this project so far: Mr. Giangiulio's homemade pipe organ. Here's a sound sample using flue pipes similar in construction to what I have planned (mine would be less warm and rich): Giangiulio sound sample

Matthias Wandel's project has also been especially helpful as an inspiration: A less ambitious but still awesome homemade pipe organ

(I don't think either of these guys knew how to play the organ either, by the way!)

Restoring an Antique German Typewriter

Laptops are for suckers. Why put up with the hassles of a cord and wall outlets, when you can enjoy the unfettered freedom of a 40 pound block of manually operated, electricity free cast iron?! Also, if you start taking mortar fire while typing a memo, this guy's got you covered:

Unfortunately, this circa 1905 Kaiser-approved German desktop typewriter arrived in rough shape fresh from UPS. It needs a lot of TLC before we can even attempt to type with it, let alone rely on it or display it proudly as some beautiful, functional art.

So... let's fix it! Repairing typewriters is a joyful experience in my opinion. Nowadays, most of the machines we use require computer diagnostics, etc. to even attempt to work on them. Even if you understand the mechanics of things like cars, there are fewer and fewer things you can fix or modify yourself as a hobbyist.

With mechanical typewriters, you can fix almost anything with only some screwdrivers, oil, ingenuity, and gumption. I obviously have no formal training on these, but I can still figure it all out, because it's all just levers and springs, and you can reliably follow them around and puzzle it out in the end. It's a sometimes very challenging, yet an almost certainly solvable puzzle, and one that uses your eyes and hands -- the best kind!

First, we begin with just testing the features:

GENERAL CHECK OVER

1. The keys, of course (A) - What happens when you hit them? Well, what happens is that a couple of them stick ("H" and "^"), and the rest make it about halfway to the platen (the rubberized striking surface at J), before they meet with mysterious bouncey resistance.
2. The space bar (B) - It snapped in half, but the lever seems to function.
3. Shifting (C) - The buttons seem to work, but the carriage (the whole top assembly) is jammed or messed up, so they don't really do what they are supposed to. I don't think it's the shift's fault, though, intuitively. This can be revisited later if necessary.
4. Caps Lock (D) - Same as shifting.
5. Carriage return lever - It moves the carriage, but it requires a stupid amount of force to do, like there's a lot of friction, about halfway across. It also makes a horrible grinding sound from the teeth skipping on the gears in the back (the rack gear S<->T with the teeth of the escapement mechanism P). 
6. Margin release - It's hard to see, but it's a button that pops out at F, when you hit the right margin. You can push it and give yourself a couple more letters if you need them (shame on you you bad bad typist! *ruler smack*). This doesn't work, because it's not attached to anything in the back (N - see the empty hole at the top of the lever).
7. Ribbon advancing - The ribbon holder (H) is supposed to move whenever you type a key. The knob at G reverses the direction. Both seem to work.
8. Platen knobs (I) - This is used for manually turning from line to line. One is missing, the other is horribly deteriorated, but there are no mechanical issues, the parts just need replacing.
9. The platen itself (J) - The rubber is in good shape!
10. Lever that lets the carriage slide freely (K) - Has the same friction and grinding issues with the carriage, but I don't think this is a cause, since it's just a minor input.
11. A bar is missing that is supposed to hold the paper down (based on internet photos of the same typewriter) at (L).
12. The single/double/triple spacing selector (M) - There was a spring that kept this in place that was out of whack. It took 2 seconds to pop back in position, and this now works.
13. The backspace function - This is disconnected in back just like the right margin is. It seems to be missing parts (O).
14. The escapement and main spring assembly (P) - This is grinding against the rack gear above it, but I don't think it is the originator of the problem, because it looks solidly attached and whole, etc.
15. Arms that hold paper (Q) - These work. There is some gross mildewy felt under them though.
16. The bell is missing (area below N), but the adjustable clapper that is supposed to hit it works (R).

General aesthetics -- Dusty and dirty. There are a few areas of uncontrollable rust, and a lot of minor rust. It should clean up pretty well, though, with some light abrasion and chemicals and elbow grease. The decals are in good shape (the back one and ribbon spools look awesome), the front one is dim but intact, and it seems to be behind a layer of flaky varnish or something. The side lettering is worn, but very easy to touch up. The paint looks great, I don't see many chips or flaws in the paint job. The keys are in mediocre shape. There's some stubborn tape or something on the top of the case.

CARRIAGE DIAGNOSIS AND REPAIR

Most of these issues can be steadily repaired and cleaned up one at a time. But the carriage issues are by far the highest priority. If they can't be fixed, the whole machine will always be useless, and so would any other repairs.

The symptoms the carriage is exhibiting are increasing friction toward one side and grinding gears. Gradual friction implies that two large moving parts are not properly aligned. Grinding implies that gears are not aligned. My first thought was thus that a major rail somewhere was bent. Thankfully, I couldn't find anything like that!

My next thought was that two or more large rails were just entirely not lined up, even though straight. For example, are screws holding the fram together missing? No. Is the FRAME straight (also not a great question to find yourself asking...). Turns out NO it isn't.  The frame has a difficult-to-see but large crack in the back near the foot (somewhat below point N in the above pictures):

This is not good, however typewriters don't actually experiences THAT much stress. The frame can probably be fixed with just a really strong 2 part epoxy (I also considered drilling through and bolting, but the surface area isn't large enough). Before doing that, though, I got a small C-clamp and just dry-clamped the sections together. What happened was that the friction largely disappeared, but the gear grinding didn't, and some parts were still knocking into each other. I futzed around until I found where:

A screwdriver just bent out the middle part by a couple of millimeters and it was fine (hopefully this doesn't mess up typing later! I don't think it will.). Next, the gear issue. Turns out that one of the two screws holding that rack gear on was rotten and the head fell apart when I tried to unscrew it (see points S and T above). Here is an over-dramatization of the rack being misaligned (in this photo it's entirely unattached not just loose) and the gear underneath it's supposed to interface with:

These screws from 1905 Germany aren't exactly standard modern thread sizes. I tried the hardware store, but it seems to be something ridiculous like M3.5 threading x 5mm long?? So instead, I found a random set screw of the same threading that wasn't doing much from elsewhere on the typewriter (see the remaining screw on the other side):

This screw was too long, so I clamped it in some vice grips and used my dremel to cut it down to the right size, then filed down the burrs on the end so it would thread (broken screw on the right):

(in its new home)

After fixing the rack, the carriage now moves smoothly (C-clamp still dry-fitted for now), and doesn't skip teeth. It does still have a couple of issues though. First of all, it's WAY too strong. I assume that somebody working on the typewriter in the past tried to ratchet up the power on the main spring to just FORCE their way past the friction from the broken frame (tsk tsk tsk!). As in, the entire typewriter was vibrating with force every time the rack gear moved at all. So I loosened the tension dramatically to make it safer and less damaging to the machine. I rocked this lever back and forth to slowly release tension one tooth at a time until the carriage was too weak to move forward. Then I re-strengthened it by a few teeth (you can just grab the wheel with your hand and turn it usually):

Finally, the carriage seems to sort of randomly stop partway across, and keys now sometimes work, and sometimes don't. When it does stop, it's a "soft" stop. It's hard to explain, but having used typewriters a lot in the past, it "feels like the typewriter doesn't want me to go further" not that something is broken and binding.

Sure enough, my intuition helped me figure out the problem after a bit of looking in the right places. Remember that margin release that was disconnected? Here's another photo of what should be there:

That missing arm is supposed to help keep the lever to the left UNTIL you hit the actual right side margin. The spring at the bottom helps hold it to the left, but was never designed to do this all by itself. What was happening was that the lever was too weakly held in its current state and was wandering randomly to the right side, then the machine thought that I was at the margin now and then, and it was dutifully stopping anything from working. For now, I just slapped some rubber bands on to hold it to the left.

SO now the carriage works! It moves one spot when you type a key all the way across and returns properly with good tension and no resistance. This is a big relief. The rest of the problems can definitely be addressed and are worth working on, now that the carriage works. I still want to keep it under observation while I fix some other things before I epoxy it, but we can move onto other things.

OILING

At this point, I also oiled the main rails and pulleys of the carriage. Oiling bars is always a good idea. Just be careful to not get oil in the springbox or in any very dense areas of machinery like the big block that holds all the typebars. Oil in hard to reach places can get gummed up and is very difficult to fix later. Getting it inside coiled spring is bad too.

DO NOT use WD-40. Use a proper machine oil. Something like sewing machine oil would be best. I'm a little lazy, and I'm just using basic 3-in-1 oil, but it's still universes better than WD-40, which will seize up in no time and make a huge mess later.

A dab will do you! I prefer to use an old toothbrush with a few drops of oil and not even pour any oil from the bottle directly on the machine at all. It leaves a medium-thin layer everywhere with no dripping into bad places.

HELPFUL RESOURCES

• The classic typewriter page has an excellent reference article on general amateur typewriter restoration.
• The typewriter database provides year of manufacture estimates for most typewriter brand serial numbers and other identification images and resources.
• The virtual typewriter museum similarly provides identification resources for a lesser number of machines, and for this one it had some very useful information about how parts are supposed to go together and what was missing on my own model.

NEXT

I need to finish up all the remaining more minor mechanical issues, fixing some linkages and fabricating a part or two (backspace, margins, missing and rusty knobs, making a new space bar, new feet, new ribbon, new bell, unstuck "^" key).

There's also a LOT of cleaning to do - rust removal, cleaning crud and dust and grease in general, dealing with the weird varnish/tobacco mix or whatever is on the front plate, retouching gold lettering, polishing, waxing. At some point, I'll probably have to remove the surface panels and clean up individual typebars underneath too. Also, re-felting.

A couple specific photos of things still left to fix that I didn't include earlier. Top: a super rusted and old rubber platen knob. Middle: A completely missing other platen knob. Bottom: Another view of the remaining knob and a lot of surface rust on other levers and things.