1935 Royal KH #KH-1808867
Status: My Collection
Hunter: Mighty Jabba (MightyJabba)
Created: 05-21-2023 at 01:25PM
Last Edit: 05-21-2023 at 01:30PM
Description:
This 1935 Royal KH was a ShopGoodwill purchase that arrived broken. They had put it into a big box filled to the brim with packing peanuts, but no other padding or packing. Since this is so heavy, it quickly settled down to the bottom and was unprotected there. The metal frame broke in several places and was also a bit bent. (See photo below.) By the way, it was incredible how far the packing peanuts made their way into the guts of the machine. I kept finding them for hours! They were underneath the type bars somehow.
To their credit, ShopGoodwill gave me a full refund immediately. I wasn’t sure how bad the damage really was, but after re-bending the bent part, the pieces of the frame looked like they would fit back in pretty well. I used some epoxy glue and was impressed at how relatively seamless it was.
I then went ahead with my usual cleaning and polishing process. I cleaned the surface dirt with some water mixed with dishwashing detergent, and used isopropyl alcohol for some things that didn’t want to come off, and to clean off minor scratches and spots of whiteout. (The scratch on the left ribbon cover basically disappeared after scrubbing it with a q-tip soaked in alcohol.) After the surfaces were clean, I used some Turtle Wax on a microfiber cloth to polish up the black paint. I’m always impressed how well that works with most of these old machines. I also had to use a small amount of sewing machine oil on the margin release button, since it kept sticking after it was pressed.
The machine works quite well now, except that some letters have a tendency to be cut off on the top when using the black setting. I’m not sure what the cause is. The ribbon vibrator seems to not be going up high enough, but intermittently. I'm sure there is a way to adjust that, but I'm not sure I'm up to it at the moment, so I decided to just use an all-black ribbon on the "red" setting, and that seems to work fine.
Typeface Specimen:
Photos:
Hunter: Mighty Jabba (MightyJabba)
Mighty Jabba's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]
Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 739
I'm relatively new to typewriter collecting, but am rapidly making up for lost time...
RESEARCH NOTE: When researching the Royal KH on a computer with lots of screen real estate, you may find that launching the Royal Serial Number page and the Royal KH By Model/Year/Serial page in new browser windows can give you interesting perspectives on changes throughout the model series.