Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Oliver 2 Project Machine

After a long absence, I am trying to get this blog moving along while burning vacation time on various projects around the house and spending time with my family. Perfection has been the enemy of content as of late. Imperfect photos from my phone might streamline things a bit.

Here is a find from a recent journey to a First Friday weekend warehouse antique mall. I was shocked to spot an early Oliver in the wild. I was even more surprised when it was priced reasonably enough to carry it two blocks to the car and bring it home  :-)







This machine is really grubby, but probably cleaner than I would be after sitting around for over a hundred years. It appears to be complete. There is a serial number somewhere under all that dirt and grime. Either way, Ted Munk's database shows an 1897-1901 production run for this model.

Time is a precious commodity and one I have been short of in a flurry of work, business travel, Senior year college visits, and various band, orchestra, theater, and cross country events. I'll keep it covered in a safe place until one of those PowerBall tickets comes up a winner  ;-)

6 comments:

  1. Congrats! I think it's been a pretty long time since I've spotted a no. 2.

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    1. Richard, it was a double take sighting. Bonus: It was really cheap! The vendor hadn't bothered looking it up and treated like any other typewriter with a broken draw cord.

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  2. Ooo, what a special find! It looks very impressive turn-of-the-century with the text in the casting too. (The 20th century, that is... :)

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    1. The later Olivers have their own cast-iron-stealth-bomber charm. I do love the exposed mechanisms, but they would have been a pain to keep clean back in the day!

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  3. That's a long trek carrying an Oliver. Looks like it will be rewarding to clean up. I've had some of my most satisfying typewriter puttering with an Oliver - hope you have fun with yours.

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    1. It is a bit heavy, but not as bad an an Oliver 9 and neither comes close to an IBM machine ;-) I'll have time to play with it about the time both of my kids are off to college. In the meantime, I have a mostly restored Oliver 3 out in the open and various typeface fetish machines to play with. Thanks for the comment and sorry for the very long delay in responding.

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