Tomorrow is National Typewriter Day–and, coincidentally, my birthday. New Mexico has had some rain for the last few days. Hopefully the fires in Ruidoso will be contained. Since I can’t mountain-bike in mud, I decided to address some long neglected issues: typewriter repairs.

A couple of my typewriters were damaged when I made the move from Florida to New Mexico in 2020. My 1924 standard Urania and 1937 portable Blue Bird lost their drawbands on the bumpy roads of Birmingham, Alabama. How’s that for a blues song? Sort of John Lee Hooker meets Bob Dylan.

Today I decided to address the Urania, which has been nestled and inactive on a shelf in the uranium state. It’s a German typewriter with a Dutch keyboard, and it has some cool decals. I took it off the shelf and looked under the hood.

The good news was that it has a winding mechanism for tightening the drawband; the bad news was that fishing line wasn’t going to cut it. The mainspring had no rims to keep a fishing line in line. It simply could slip off. The original drawband was flat and made out of a canvas-like material, each end featuring a hole for a screw.

I needed something more like a shoelace, so into the wardrobe I delved. I found one and cut it to size, but I had to figure out how to make it sturdy. The cut lace could fray on the ends.

First I dipped the ends in some candle wax.

Then I folded each end and sewed across the fold, leaving room for screw holes.

Then I made the screw holes with a nail.

I needed to make the new drawband shorter than the original because the shoelace had some give to it; that said, even if the lace stretches in the future, the winding mechanism can be tightened. Thank the Germans for thinking ahead.

I had two fears: 1) would I be able to fully penetrate the lace with the short screws, and 2) would I be able to get the screws back in at the awkward angles? Strangely, these final tasks came easy.

So that’s that. The new drawband stays on the mainspring and it’s taut enough to advance the carriage for smooth typing. If it slackens, I can tighten it. Oppenheimer would be proud.

Make words, not wars.