Red feet

I’d wanted a Hermes 3000 since the first time I saw the color. That pale sea-green enamel, the rounded corners, the whole thing shaped like a kitchen appliance from a better future. I figured I’d never see one in person. Then one turned up at a thrift store in Brooksville, on a shelf with the bread machines, and nobody there knew it from a toaster.

By the look of it, around 1960, give or take. As smooth as people say. And it typed the top strip: every letter wearing red socks, and the whole line fading out to nothing by the end.

Two faults, one neighborhood. It’s all ribbon.

The red

A two-color ribbon is black along the top half and red along the bottom. When you strike a key, a little fork called the vibrator lifts the ribbon up in front of the paper, and how high it lifts decides which color the type lands on: a short lift for black, a taller one for red.

The selector on this one was set to black. But the linkage under the lever was stiff with old grease and had stopped partway, so the ribbon was riding a little too high. Not high enough for red. Just high enough that the bottom edge of every letter landed across the line, in the red.

That’s a handy thing to be able to read. Red along the bottoms means the ribbon is too high. If the tops of the letters are pale or missing instead, it’s too low, and the type is hitting above the ribbon’s top edge. Either way the letters are fine and the lift is wrong.

The fade

The ribbon wasn’t advancing. The spools are supposed to turn a notch with every keystroke, so each letter gets a fresh bit of ribbon. These weren’t turning at all. Every character of my line hit the very same spot on the cloth, each one taking a little more ink out of it, until there was none left to take. If I’d kept typing it would have worn a hole.

Same cause: old grease gone to wax, this time on the little pawls that push the spools around.

What I did

Almost nothing, and it took two evenings because I was scared of it. This is not a machine I wanted to learn on. I took the ribbon cover and the spools off, put a rag underneath, and cleaned the selector linkage and the feed pawls with mineral spirits on a small brush, until each one moved if I so much as breathed on it. Then a drop of light oil on each pivot. A pivot, mind you, not the segment; there’s a difference.

I wound a new black-and-red ribbon onto the original spools. The spools are the part that’s particular to the machine. The ribbon is the same half-inch cloth everybody uses.

Not fixed

Nothing needed it. The platen is firmer than I’d like, but it isn’t the Olympia. I’m leaving it alone.

It was ninety-four outside both evenings, and the storm came through right at five like it had a time card to punch. The guest room held at 46 percent on the gauge. I’ve been meaning to write down what I’ve learned about this climate the expensive way, and I’ll get to it soon.