5 pieces filed under this tag.
The best first portable is the one you will still be typing on in six months. Here are four machines that consistently reward beginners and four that consistently disappoint them.
Two hundred dollars will not buy you a museum piece. It will buy you a reliable daily writer that keeps you in the hobby past the first month. Here are five specific models and where to look.
Almost every stuck typewriter is only dirty. The trick is cleaning it without dissolving the paint, softening the platen, or driving fresh grime into the segment.
The typebars are almost always fine. It is the dried grease in the segment slots that has become concrete. Here is the calm way to dissolve it without turning a straight bar into a bent one.
Universal spools, fabric versus nylon, DIN standards versus proprietary reels. A ten-minute job that looks intimidating the first time and never intimidating again.