I’ve given a variety of machines a try since I wrote this update. I did use the Studio 42 for a few days, then gave the Super-Speed a go. The Super-Speed turned out to be ungodly loud–at least, it seems that way in the dead of night.

For the last few nights, my primary at-home typer has been the Remington Noiseless 10. It’s a monster. It looks (and weighs) an awful lot like a Teutonic tank. It makes the Noiseless Portable feel flimsy.

NaNo is a great excuse to bring some of my seldom-used machines out of their stables. But as Duffy warned about, primping a machine for use can be a real time-destroyer. I spent a couple of hours today fiddling with the Remington Seventeen my neighbor gave me. It still has a little bit of an issue with the drawband dragging toward the end of a line, but I’ve mostly got it tip-top. Man, those Seventeens are sweet.

Some machines that I would like to use I just don’t dare. Like one of the Caligraphs or the Smith-Premier 1 (if either were working). Doing NaNo on the fraktur Remington 7 would be way cool, but I honestly don’t think that it would hold up under that intense of usage. It’s a fragile machine (remember that many of its parts are made out of century-old wood). Besides, who’d want to read 100 pages of Germanic calligraphy?

Whatever happened to your typer with the Metallica typeface?

The sadist in me actually would like to see what it’s like to go to town on a Varityper, mainly because the photos I’ve seen make them look like something Captain Nemo might use for a manifesto.

What I’d really like, though, is a good standard machine that’s been professionally adjusted and tuned, with new rubber and clean type. Like LFP’s SG1, say. I like my machines, but the accumulated dust and occasional funky behavior demonstrates that in the area of repair and restoration, I’m still a dabbler.

I have to say, my SM9 is working beautifully. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the SG1 gets done soon. I am just dying to see what LFP is talking about.

Its like, she came right into my life just for NaNo…can’t fight fate, right?

Always proofread carefully to make sure you didn’t any words out.

But really, if I could use any typewriter…at the moment, I think I’d still go with my SG-1. I’m that smitten with it. I *might* choose a different typeface for it if I could–the plain jane 11 pt. font is pretty middling all the way around–but it’s growing on me.

But all the SM-9 talk that seems to have popped up makes me think I’ll at least my ugly beat-up 11 pt. model out for a bit, if only to compare.

If I could use any typewriter in the world, though? Even though I’ve never used one, my fantasy typer is one of the old Royal 10’s with the glass sides, or maybe a late-model Underwood Touchmaster 5.