[GreenKeys] Teletype Model 33 Restoration Project - UPDATE

Tue May 12 19:52:04 EDT 2015

Greenkeys,
It has been 15 long months since I started this project and joined this great list.  We have reached a milestone and I wanted to share some photos with you and brag a little on Wayne Durkee who was instrumental in making this happen.  If you rewind to January of 2014, you may recall I decided to recapture a little of my childhood and went in search of a Model 33 ASR like the one I had as a kid.  Well, as it turned out, I was lucky to find the EXACT machine I had (I managed to talk the UMass Dean of Engineering into giving it to me back in 1983) and I used it with a single board 6802 computer I built when I was around 19 years old.  I still have the computer BTW and plan on finally reuniting the two after 32 years.
When I went to pickup the UMass machine, I found another 5 machines with it so I bought them all.  They had been sitting inside a Dayton, OH garage/warehouse for the past 24 years.  I sent the keyboards, pedestals and UCC-6's to Florida and drove the remaining machines to Vermont so Wayne could work his magic.  These machines were basically dirty, rusted - junk.  I will not forget the look on Wayne's face when he asked me what I wanted to do with them and I explained I wished to restore 4 of them them to "Like New" condition - not just fix them.  You could see on his face he was thinking "You gotta be kiddin' me".  Just today Wayne finished assembly of the 4th machine and I hope the list will forgive me for sharing a few pix.  We divided the work as follows:  Wayne restored all the mechanical components (printer, punch, etc.) and I did all the cosmetic and electronic work including stripping/painting & plating.  It took 3 months to restore the 4 keyboards (those damn chalky keys), and 1 month for each of the UCC-6's - working every night and almost every weekend!
The first pair of photos is my original UMass machine (the one responsible for starting this whole project) S/N: 286,369.  Wayne tried to talk me out of this "high mileage" restoration but as I explained, it was the one with the most sentimental value.  Next pair is the S/N: 464789 - the best of the bunch.  After that is my favorite, the S/N: 436614 - purported to have only about 100 hours total use on it, and finally S/N: 501269, the latest model of the bunch.  Unfortunately, the '614 printer had been dropped - real bad - at some point in its history and I found 4-5 bent and broken pieces in the sub-base when I removed it.  In fact, Wayne had to replace a part on this machine he had never had to service in his entire career repairing these things.  He managed to replace all the damaged components and get the machine working as new.
The next update will show the before and after restoration work on the pedestals (should be done in May) and in the final update I will send 4 photos of the completed machines with the restored covers.  I still need a couple months to finish the plastics.  At some point in the future I plan on donating the machines to telecommunications/computer museums.
Thanks for the bandwidth and enjoy the fruit of our labor.  Four machines rescued from the scrap heap!  If you have any questions about the restoration or need help with your own projects feel free to contact me.
--daveW5DT
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