Remington Portable No. 1 - During and After

Some of you are wondering whether the red Remington Portable No. 1 in the previous post is actually a custom paint job - the answer is yes! I am glad the end result looks nice enough to pass for original, though, and indeed I wanted a red one because I knew there had been some red No. 3s made that I liked the look of, but my chances of finding one of those in the wild here are slim to none.

When I told J I thought the original scratched black finish of this typewriter (as I said, it seemed as though a previous owner had been at the logo with steel wool, completely obliterating it) would look better painted over in red, he whipped off the case so quickly I barely had time to take "before" pictures.

So here are a few blurry pictures taken in progress - this is the body of the typewriter, nowhere near as bad as the ribbon cover, though.

Still, it would have looked half-hearted to paint just the ribbon cover, so we did the rest of it too. There is a two-tone effect at the back I will have to show you sometime, as J masked off the Remington logo in order not to paint over it.

Here it is immediately after the paint cured and J put it back together. Ever the perfectionist, he wasn't 100% happy with the result (apparently he had not let the paint dry completely between coats and there were a few areas where that showed), but I think on the whole it looks very nice and your comments reflect that!

Like Peter, I wonder how this will hold up with regular use - so far I have not held on to the other typewriters we painted (the infamous Lettera 35 and a Hermes Baby in 2010), but I have no plans to part with this one just yet, so we shall be able to see how the paint ages.

Seeing Red

Typing this post, I realized why we were able to get this typewriter so inexpensively - the right shift key is missing! I suspect it broke off at some point, since there is a discernible, but subtle "scar". It makes for an interesting typing experience - not ideal, but tolerable for a few sentences. Oh well, at least the paint job matches the small vinyl case for brushes that came with it.

There were better pictures taken, but it seems I accidentally deleted them from the SD card before saving. Oh, well, these will do for now. The paper table was left intact as J couldn't figure out how to get to it. Also, the carriage return lever was salvaged from a Lettera 35 parts machine, as the original one was broken.

Next up for a coat of red paint is this Remington Portable No. 1.

This is a slightly less common model than the Lettera 32, but the original paint work was quite scratched up and the decal was gone entirely - a previous owner seems to have been handy with steel wool...

The metal tray underneath the keys (which pops up to type) was left black. The inspiration for this paint job was Alan Seaver's excellent two-tone Parnelli Monarch, which is well worth a gander if you haven't seen it already.

The Beginning of the End?

I have a love/hate relationship with blogging. On the one hand, it allows me to reach a wonderful community of like-minded enthusiasts, sharing with them my triumphs and travails in typewriter collecting. On the other hand, the more time I spend on my blog, the less time I have for actual real-life pursuits. And the novelty of typecasting wears off after a while - I love to type, of course, but the prospect of hauling out the scanner, uploading and resizing images... at least I managed to get it down to a routine where it was not quite as daunting/ time-consuming as it could be.

I don't want to announce anything too drastic, yet. After all, I have had other blogging slumps and it is fine to take a couple of weeks off here and there to engage in other interests, and then catch up by and by. I do have a few more posts in mind - some new acquisitions, some painting jobs to show off, lots of sightings in the wild, perhaps even some forays into discussing my new discovery of a vintage sewing machine obsession (one that was probably lurking beneath the surface of my typewriter addiction all these years, now that I think of it!).

That said, when I take a hiatus from blogging - intended or not - I tend not to look at the blog much myself, either. I assume it will stay dormant but largely intact, ready for me to pick up where I left off when I can make some time for it.

Or so I thought, until I took a look today. What happened to my Followers gadget? My "Recent Comments" thingamajig? Both refuse to display and there is a forbidding message to the "webmaster" (I suppose that would be me?) to verify some URL or the other. Just to be clear - I loathe this stuff. HTML and so on, the inner workings that make this blog tick. I would rather not know, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to attempt puzzling it out. Just give me a template, a form to fill out and I am all set. And now this?

I realize Google is attempting to retire their "Friend Connect" and force everyone to link up via Google Plus, but I don't see this change being enforced on any of the other blogs I read so far. I have tried to look up what exactly the problem is with my malfunctioning gadgets, but I am still no closer to resolving the issue and the whole thing gives me a headache. Time to retire this blog? I don't know what hoops Google/ Blogger would have us jump through in order to continue to use this platform, but it is clear that they are evolving whether we like it or not and we will have no choice but to follow along or get dropped. Is it worth it for me to attempt to maintain a blog here? I am not sure. I never looked seriously at Wordpress, but perhaps I should (assuming I want to keep writing a blog, which is to be determined. I would miss sharing my market sightings, though...)

Anyone have any ideas how I can get this back to normal? I realize now I can only see my blog as genevatypewriters.blogspot.ch (since I am looking it up from Switzerland) whereas before the .com worked just fine for me. Does that have something to do with it? I don't know if I can help that. Sigh.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.