While working on another project, and waiting for things to dry in this scorching Canberra summer, I decided to finally tackle a paint-faded Olivetti Lettera 22 mask which had been sitting out the back for months - it was only adding to the clutter.
This turned out to be a bigger project than expected. Reinforcing that Olivetti, when servicing these machines, offered re-paints of the casing and ribbon spools cover (but not the paper plate), this machine had at least two coats – fawn on top and blue-grey underneath. So it took lots of paint-stripper and even more elbow grease to get all the paint off.
The original plan was to repaint it in red and green stripes for Christmas, but it looked so good stripped to the metal that I grabbed the guts of a Lettera 22 from off the spare parts heap and assembled the machine. Only then did I realise why the mechanics had been chucked on the spare parts heap in the first place – it has no carriage lever! Ah well, even without the lever, it works greats and looks sort of sexy in the nude – I might just leave as it as it is. We’ll see …
PS: Before anyone springs to my aid, I do have a spare carriage lever I can fit to this machine - I just didn't around to doing it.
PS: Before anyone springs to my aid, I do have a spare carriage lever I can fit to this machine - I just didn't around to doing it.