A Sticky Shift
This Quiet De Luxe had a sticky shift, but it wasn't the usual culprit as it was clean as a whistle. A little tuning in a few key parts got this one typing smooth and fast again.
A Shift in Perspective
Recently got to play around with a 50’s era Quiet De Luxe. This particular one is later than most of the machines I’ve played with, but I was excited to get a chance to try it out. It had a few new features over the earlier portable Royals, one of which caused a little headache for a bit. More about the machine itself later, but for now we’ll talk about a carriage shift feature on these.
Manual typewriters are typically one of two major styles, either carriage or segment shift. There are of course exceptions like the skeleton shift, however at the heart of the mechanism, any non-index typewriter will usually have either the segment (basket) or the carriage move in order to utilize the other half of a slug on a typebar.
Carriage vs. Segment
Manual typewriters are typically one of two major styles, either carriage or segment shift. There are of course exceptions like the skeleton shift, however at the heart of the mechanism, any non-index typewriter will usually have either the segment (basket) or the carriage move in order to utilize the other half of a slug on a typebar.
Generally speaking it was easier to design a moving carriage than a moving segment, as the carriage already needed to move laterally. Adding a shift to the carriage “simply” required adding a vertical movement to the carriage rails, something which already had space to move. By contrast, the basket lives inside the machine, which would require leaving extra space. Over the years, many manufacturers would move from carriage to segment shifts, each advertising it as their own flavor of feature. For the Royals, this “shift” happened somewhere in the 1930’s.
With carriage shifts, usually it would rest in the down position and shifting would bring the entire carriage up, however on the Royals with the segment shift (as well as many other machines) the shift action would bring the basket down and away from the platen. This means that if there is any imbalance in spring tension, vibration, or other unusual movements, you might find your shift mechanism being enabled by gravity.
To get around this, these later Quiet De Luxe models featured a locking safety under the shift linkage. If you push down on the carriage without pressing the shift keys, it will depress until it engages this lock and then it stops. This would prevent your machine from accidentally moving into the shifted position, either partially or fully. Neat feature!
Cue the issue on this machine: While pressing the shift, it would hang slightly. Pressing more firmly would eventually cause the shift to engage, but it would take more force than was ideal, which would most certainly slow down any writer who ever cared to capitalize. Though perhaps there are some who have chosen that lowercase life.
In order to resolve it, a pair of needlenose pliers on the shift activation arm bent it a little downwards in order to activate the shift block a little earlier. When bent too far, the segment lock would fail to activate, allowing you to push down from the segment and push it down even without pressing the shift keys. Bending it back so the arm was roughly perpendicular to the shift lever was the ticket - it moves the shift safety out of the way when pressing the shift keys, but kept it lowercase if you tried pressing in the basket.
If you're having trouble with a heavy shift on your Quite De Luxe, check out this spot and see if it needs a little tweak!
To see this machine in action and learn about the magic margins, check out this video: