If you’re in the United States and looking for a first typewriter, I’d recommend one of the Smith Corona series 5 machines. These guys aren’t as sleek as the speedline or flattops that came earlier, nor as colorful as the Smith Coronas that followed the series 5. But they’re solid, not that difficult to service, and widely available. Smith Corona must have made millions of them.

I picked up this Sterling, made in 1954, a couple years ago for the grand sum of $54. It’s just about the cheapest in my collection, but I find myself pulling it out of its case regularly. It makes a great grinding noise with the carriage return and has a sort of clunk-clunk-clunk feel as I’m typing, but with a nice silk ribbon (thank you Ribbons Unlimited) it produces great dark type. The margin release is solid, it never skips a space in the middle of a word at the end of a line. I also like this gray, almost purple color, though most of these machines come in different shades of brown.

I spent some time servicing this machine before using it.

First I removed all the body panels and pulled out the platen and anything else that I could easily remove. I took a picture of just about every screw so I would remember where it went when it came time to put the machine back together. (I have a small plastic case–like a fishing tackle box, but smaller–with little slots where I can keep the screws all separate, and don’t have to worry about losing any of them.)

I took a series of pictures of the more complicated pieces like this ratchet that advances the platen as I disassembled it. Again, this helps when it comes time to put it all back together.

Then I gave the stripped machine a thorough cleaning with mineral spirits, and I scrubbed all the body panels with Simple Green. Here’s before and after cleaning the innards.

And I touched up some of the paint. The paper guide was very easy to make look almost new with a white paint stick.

Plus, I changed out the felt both in the back of the machine and under the top lid. The old felt was in pretty bad shape, and didn’t smell so great once it got wet.

Here’s the machine looking pretty spiffy. (Though I also later matched the paint to touch up the lower left corner that had a small rust spot.)

One of the nice things about these Sterlings is that they aren’t all that complicated. The Olympia machines in my growing collection have a whole lot more going on with their innards.

I also really like the case. It reminds me of the luggage that I might have seen in my grandparents’ house.