{"id":18479,"date":"2026-07-15T13:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=18479"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:04:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:04:31","slug":"cleaning-up-the-olympia-sm9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2026\/07\/cleaning-up-the-olympia-sm9\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning up the 1967 Olympia SM9"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple years ago, a friend was clearing out an estate for a relative, and reached out to me because he had found a typewriter and mechanical calculator that he thought I might be interested in. Indeed! I wrote about the calculator here<\/a> and briefly mentioned the typewriter, a 1967 Olympia SM9. We did some basic cleaning on the typewriter then so I would be comfortable bringing it indoors (it had been sitting in a barn for decades), and concluded my words about it with “I’ll clean it up and get a new ribbon for it during our next visit.”<\/em> Well, since it’s now two years later, that didn’t happen then, but it has happened now!<\/p>\n

I’m actually glad I waited until I was ready. I’ve learned a lot about cleaning and mechanical typewriter care since then, so it allowed me to tackle it with more expertise under my belt.<\/p>\n

The first thing you should know about the SM9 is that it frequently has a place on “top 10” typewriters lists. They aren’t rare though, so it wasn’t a total shock to find it in a barn in northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s also a portable typewriter (though at 25lbs with the case, you may argue with that definition) so it’s designed to be stored in a case, which I also have and is decent condition, just dirty. But my first goal was to clean the typewriter.<\/p>\n

Adam helped me out with that, we took an old soft-bristled toothbrush and q-tips with a little water to wipe down the surfaces and keys, and get random bits of fluff, dust, and cobwebs out of it. Then we used Simple Green, an all-purpose cleaner recommended by the typewriter community, to get some of the more difficult spots, like the keys. It was gleaming! I was actually quite impressed with the great condition it was in.<\/p>\n

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We patted it down and then took it outside, where the boys played in the front yard, and we all took turns typing on it. Even though the black ribbon it had was quite worn out, it still worked!<\/p>\n

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I did order a new ribbon though, and I decided to go with a blue and red one. Once that arrived from my usual vendor on Etsy<\/a>, I put on some gloves to install it (one of those lessons I learned if I don’t want days of ink-stained hands) and Adam had a lot of fun seeing if he could make the resulting text on the paper purple with strategic text placement. I love how comfortable he’s become operating mechanical things.<\/p>\n

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The case took some more work. I started by gently wiping the dust and debris out of the inside of the case, which is lined with a soft sort of fabric, and left it at that. As for the outside, I’ve read mixed things about using Scrubbing Bubbles on typewriters, since there is risk of damage on certain textured surfaces. But after some close inspection and starting with a test spot, it looked like it wouldn’t do damage to this case if I used it carefully. And that test spot looked pristine!<\/p>\n

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I then got to work on the rest of the case. Essentially, you wipe the whole outside down gently with a cloth and water to get any of the easy to remove surface dirt off, and then you spend quite a bit of time cleaning it with rounds of: Scrubbing bubbles, let sit for 2 minutes, scrub with soft-bristled toothbrush, gently wipe the bubbles off with a damp towel. I did this in two phases, about 30 minutes during lunch on the deck one afternoon, and concluding with about another 45 minutes one evening at a table on the driveway while Aaron was outside riding his bike with his friends in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

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And for clarity sake, there wasn’t a cleaning-related reason I did it outdoors. These cleaners are quite safe and don’t give off strong odors. It was just a string of nice days, and it’s nice being outside.<\/p>\n

Now I’ll be the first to admit that this cleaning job is not perfect. And I didn’t remove the metal hardware, which is often recommended for a full case cleaning. But it’s a lot of work, and at some point I determined that there were spots of actual stains that wouldn’t get clean with this process, and I had gotten enough dirt off for me to be comfortable with its current state. And it does look pretty good!<\/p>\n

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With it all clean and a new ribbon, it’s an absolute pleasure to type on. I can see why it lands at the top of these lists. I’m still a Smith-Corona enthusiast (the Skyriter and the Sterling are tops for me!), but this Olympia SM9 is definitely in the running as one of my favorites. Welcome to the family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple years ago, a friend was clearing out an estate for a relative, and reached out to me because he had found a typewriter and mechanical calculator that he thought I might be interested in. Indeed! I wrote about the calculator here and briefly mentioned the typewriter, a 1967 Olympia SM9. We did some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-typewriter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18479"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18499,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions\/18499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}