Typewriter Video Series - Episode 190: Carbon Paper Ribbons!

[@johnandrewmunroe]

Ingenious! Love this backup approach.

[@drandallesq]

Brilliant test Joe! I saw the blog entry too, and thought "yeah, sure", but you actually made it work - well done. There may come a time when we need this fix, if the sources of ribbon disappear.

[@agricolturadimontagna2.0]

I've just made my own device to reink used ribbons! Also bicolor ones!

[@kwacz]

Thats a lot of work but yielded good results. usually you would use a carbon ribbon when you want the best quality output. Some typewriters you can buy a carbon ribbon for

[@ianrobbins]

Excellent video! I use carbon paper all the time (the usual way) and although it's great for the purpose to which it was intended, this seems like a great use case for those times when you don't have a roll of regular ribbon. I wonder how much carbon-paper ribbon you could actually fit onto a spool. Think I'll have to give it a try to see!

[@Dr_Joe]

Excellent project. Who’da thunk it.

[@JeremiahBu11frog]

Wooow great idea!

[@Frisenette]

Seems kind of pointless when you can just put the carbon paper on top of normal in the machine, and be done with it. And probably you'd get better use of it too.

[@emrekayik]

Good video

[@Olumin37]

13mm plastic carbon ribbons on standard spools were sold (by pelican for example) and can still be found sometimes. I am using one on my Report Deluxe. The biggest issue is that most machines wont advance the ribbon by a whole character at a time, so you end up with uneven print. I tried to use it on my SG1 and it yielded poor results, which is a shame. I was very optimistic about that SG1 too, since they sold a version of it which took carbon ribbons. Did they have a differently engineered ribbon advance? Seems pointless. Perhaps you know of a way to modify the ribbon advance on an SG1 so it advances by a whole character?

[@Lysander-Spooner]

Have you tried respooling a carbon ribbon from a Selectric on to another machine?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

I have not done this yet. You want to select a manual machine that advances the ribbon far enough with each keystroke such that the imprint doesn't overlap on the ribbon. I'd imagine an elite (12 cpi) machine might be better for this than pica, as the characters are narrower, less chance for overlap on the ribbon.

[@BonsaiBrandy]

Hey Joe, why were carbon strips used instead of cloth and ink ribbons? What benefits do carbon ribbons have?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

Carbon ribbons have "professional" quality imprint, and they can be erased with lift-off correction tape.

[@MissMargaritaable]

Excellent idea! My machine smudges my paper more heavily with the carbon paper inserted regularly! This idea seems like a totally awesome way to prevent that! Where do you get the empty spools?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

I save the spools when I change a used ribbon.

[@LTHanlon]

Excellent results. Would it be practical to respool IBM film ribbon too?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

I haven't tried it yet, but it would be excellent for extended typing, since the plastic film is so thin, you can fit a lot of footage onto a 2" reel.

[@aphexteknol]

Joe Van Cleave This was exactly my thought as well. Finding some carbon film refills for daisywheel type machines that happens to be 1/2” and spooling that up on a manual typewriter. That might actually turn out to be a pretty neat experiment.

[@johnearley9816]

I have some respooled IBM carbon film ribbon and it works just fine. Messy to respool since the carbon is so 'fragile' but ir works the same as it would on an IBM machine.