A tiny typewriter screw can …
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Way back - when, as I recall, Yahoo hosted the No 1 typewriter forum on the web - one of the pioneer American collector-restorers wrote an hilarious article about spending the best part of a year down on his knees searching for a missing Corona 3 screw on his workshop floor. (If memory serves, it was Ed Peters, but I can’t be certain about that.)
Being forewarned didn’t stop me – unhappily – from taking an armoury of screwdrivers to a multitude of unsuspecting typewriters. And, yes, over almost 30 years many dozens of tiny screws have been lost forever. One does often get a vague idea about the general direction the recalcitrant screw has taken in its flight, but more often as not the hunt in this area proves utterly fruitless. I’m sure this is a mystery experienced by all those who’ve failed to resist that inevitable temptation – “I’ll just loosen this one screw …”
There is, nonetheless, another side to these screwy sagas. And that is the barely controllable joy at actually finding a missing screw. Down on the workshop floor on all fours, straining the eyesight, looking fore and aft, when suddenly there’s the slightest glimmer of a slightly silvery screw. A stretch, a touch, and … yes, triumph! Except sometimes, as happened to me yesterday, same said found screw immediately went walkabout again. Damn! The hunt resumes …
5 comments:
The amazing magic smoke in electronics and the ever hungry floor.
When I started in radio back when I was about 10 my mentor warned me NOT to loose any screws because his shop floor would always devour them.
Throughout my career I found that was true of every tiny screw in every workshop, and for magic smoke...when it rises from a component or the entire circuit things stop working rather quickly.
Good to see you posting again!
Yes! :-)
And tiny springs. Somehow teeny torsion springs are prone to such scooting off and hiding.
Ha! I once had a cat that would bolt into the room if I dropped anything small & metal on the tile floor of my work are and instantly find it. I'd have to be quick on the recovery though, or she'd bat it under some immovable shelf.
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who has this experience all too frequently!
Yes, Robert there are many things that remain unexplained. In thousands of years time, our houses will be dug up and people will ask. "Just what are these tiny bits of metal we keep finding?"
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