My first real tool ever

Owning a so called obsolete thing like a typewriter brings up several problems (apart from the obviuos space limitation and strange looks from other people when they find out you have a dozen of typewriters, old computers or game consoles in your home). One of them is the trouble with getting replacement parts. For example, a tooth broke off from the daisywheel of my otherwise perfect WheelWriter during shipping, and I had to purchase a whole other machine just to get an intact writing element (you can get wheels on Ebay, but I needed a Hungarian one, and that's hard to get).

IBM Selectric service crank

The other one is that sometimes you need to fix them and you need proper tools even for cleaning. That's another thing I'm short of. So I made my first step towards eliminating this issue by ordering a crank from Ebay. This is just a crank, you say, and you may be right. But this is a special tool made for IBM Selectrics and it allows you to hand-cycle the mechanism of the machine. The original tool got a knob at the end, so its official name was "Hand-cycle wheel", but that one is no longer produced. So this one is a custom made product I got for $12.70 plus shipping plus a little donation for the U.S. Marine Corps which is rewarded by a pretty sticker on the envelope which I like (this is a shame since now I'll never throw it away - okay, maybe I will. Eventually.).

I'm far from getting all the tools I need, but it's a good start, and more will follow.