Monday, July 31, 2017

Pearl White Dvorak SIII Conversion - SOLD

Here's the Selectric III Dvorak conversion that I've been working on. It turned out better than I expected. It's painted Pearl White with a Black bottom, which was not a color that was normally available on Selectric III models. I chose this color combination due to the custom nature of this machine.




The machine has been fully re-conditioned with a chemical wash, necessary parts replacement including a new aluminum cycle clutch pulley, complete lubrication with synthetic lubricants and all adjustments checked and corrected. On top of all this, the keyboard was converted to ANSI Dvorak layout. A new velocity vane was installed to correct for the relocation of the low-velocity keys which isn't done in most conversions by others. This makes the machine type just like IBM engineers intended.


The ribbon was also converted on this machine to the more common and less expensive SRS version, instead of the "bicycle" ribbon it originally had. Switching the ribbon types was no easy task, but the SRS ribbon is much cheaper and much easier to purchase, so I went the extra mile on this one for longevity's sake.






The case was stripped of the old deteriorated foam, cleaned and painted this beautiful Pearl White. New sound-reducing foam was installed in the factory locations.







A normal re-condition job on a Selectric takes me about 20 - 25 hours. Nothing is left un-checked. Because of the extra work to convert the keyboard to ANSI Dvorak, this one has a substantial additional amount of time in it, plus the additional parts required that are not commonly available.






It's a beautiful, custom-built machine that will be a pleasure to own and type on. I will be documenting the details of the conversion as soon as I can.

SOLD

3 comments:

  1. That's an incredible undertaking, with great results!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello,

    How much do you Selectric conversions cost?

    You can contact me at draybon@gmail.com.

    Thanks,

    Don

    ReplyDelete