Repair of the Perkins Braille typewriter on "The Repair Shop" on BBC one.

After our last appearance on the Repair Shop back in 2019, A lot of things have changed and all we could say is that our repair of the Corona 3 typewriter on National Television was a life changing event. 

Joujou and myself are always grateful for this chance by Ricochet to show our skills and ability to rejuvenate typewriters as this also motivated us to go even further and work harder on our abilities to make sure that if we have been called again, we come back with full power to repair any typewriter model that The Repair Shop contributors needs to repair or restore. 

The wait was a little longer than expected as the Covid pandemic made things slower & times passed quickly without even noticing as we have been busy serving a lot of clients world wide. 

During January 2023 & after our Christmas rush, I had this inner feeling that The Repair Shop will get a new typewriter to repair and go back to the barn with an extra 4 years of experience and global reputation. 

The phone rings during the 1st week of April, and its The Repair Shop... They wanted our feedback about a potential repair and if it is possible to restore it. 

Email is in our inbox & the first impression is... 

Oh, its a Brallier and not a typewriter... 

I have never ever worked or repaired a Braille machine in my life and all we know about them is their history as we own a couple of pre 1930s Braille machines in our personal typewriter collection. 

A Braille machine, similar to a typewriter, with six keys, and one space bar, but it doesn't type, it is made to  leave an embossing impression on a paper for the visually impaired users to type Braille letters. 

I have to admit that we were hesitant to take the job as we have wide experience repairing typewriters but no clue how to deal with Brallier and their problems. 

But Joujou and Myself have rarely said "No" to a challenge and decided to go with our gut that we will be able to repair the Brailler on the show and help Jemma and Lynda to use it. 

 The First day back in the Barn was amazing as it was a while since we worked with lots of new faces and always helpful people around  & not to forget the wonderful experts who we respect and admire. 

We know a lot of the experts in person but it was the first time to meet Lucia and Kirstin in person as the first time we have been there in 2018, they have not been filming. Later this week, we had the pleasure to meet Julian, The Guitar repair expert. 

The minute we started filming, the clock was ticking and now we need to know how to deal with this Braille machine and imagine how to tackle all the present issues that we could detect since the 1st feedback and what issues might be still uncovered. 

The Braille machine was filled with dust, grime and grease all over and the 1st thing we thought off is full dismantle and rebuild after cleaning up everything and flushing all the mechanism from a lot of gunk that blocked all the inner mechanism. 

I can remember how hard it was to do all the work as we have never done this before & film at the same time,  but the support we had and relaxed medium was beyond helpful,

The Brallier had nothing moving or working and Joujou trusted me to fully dismantle it and use my photographic memory to rebuilt from scratch after removing all the grease from all the mechanism that was not leaving any room work parts to move. 

Without any hesitance, part after part was removed, and the Braille machine is in pieces on our desk. 

The clogging in the main spring and the pinching mechanism was the hardest, and specially the later as I had to refit the pins in the proper order, otherwise, the embossing will not be leaving any impressions and I cant test that before fully rebuilding the Braille machine. 

I need to note, like our work with typewriters, we never used machine manuals for help and only relied on our typewriter experience and our memory to rebuild the fiddly mechanism again. 

Finally, everything was back in place, and time to fix one of the main problems that the contributor mentioned and it was that they couldn't insert the paper in the right position and it did not stop rolling at the specific line before the end of the paper. 

Thankfully, I noticed that the inner drum had a loose tension spring that will regulate the movement of the roller and will stop the paper at the right position. tight space to work inside the machine but was worth it as we learned a lot from this repair. 

The Brailler is now nicely taking the paper and the embossing is perfectly leaving the marks with no holes or light impressions. It was just perfect. 

Now we move the cosmetic part and Joujou was all over the carrying case making sure it is secure, and we thought that it will be special to add Jemma's name, using Braille sticker, embossed using one of our braille machines. and it was spot on as it looked great and she was able to read it. 

One thing I recall was how cheerful and positive  Lynda and Jemma were and we loved listening to their stories and how the Braille machine will be used afterwards. 

If you watched the episode, you now know that the repair was a pure success and we are grateful that we have been able to return it to the contributors as good as new. 

Most importantly, behind the scenes, there is a huge team of professionals who put all efforts to deliver the best picture of the repairs and the 15 min video of each repair is 100s of hours spent from all the team to deliver the best episodes.

It is a privilege to work with The Repair Shop team of talented people and experts. 

Before I end my blog, we wanted to let you know that we filmed another episode in 2024, marking our third episode, and it is forecasted to be broadcasted  in 2025. 

Always grateful for your support to "The Repair Shop". 

You can watch on BBC iPlayer