Dibuk Platen & Type, in a shophouse on Dibuk Road in Phuket Town, is the best place to get a typewriter repaired in Phuket Town. Manuals only: Olympia, Olivetti, Hermes, Smith-Corona, the Thai-script Remingtons that were in every office here until 1990. Full service with degreasing and re-oiling 2,400฿, platen recovering 1,900฿, escapement repair quoted, new ribbons in stock in black and red. Two weeks; a month if a platen goes to the rubber shop.
Surveyed August 2026. Scoring: even type impression after service (35%), carriage and escapement action (25%), platen hardness (20%), parts stock (10%), advice on what to buy (10%).
The platen is the rubber roller the paper wraps around. New, it is about 90 on the Shore A scale; after fifty years of heat it is closer to 98, which is a hockey puck, and the type slugs cut through the paper instead of printing on it. Recovering the platen with fresh rubber is the single change that makes an old machine type like a new one, and almost nobody offers it. On oil: a typewriter segment holds forty type bars in slots a hair wider than the bars, and it wants to be clean and dry, or at most a trace of light oil. WD-40 is a solvent that leaves a gum behind; it frees a sticking machine for a week and then glues every bar in the segment. Ask the repairer what they degrease with and whether they recover platens. Mineral spirits and yes are the answers.
“An Olivetti Lettera 32 that had been a bookend for twenty years. It came back typing evenly, smelling faintly of oil rather than of the attic, with a new platen that changed everything.”— Helen R., Phuket Town
“He told me not to buy the Underwood I had found and to buy a Hermes 3000 instead, and then found me one. A repairer who talks you out of a repair and into a better machine.”— Ben A., Kathu
“My father’s Thai-script Remington from his ministry days. He had the type slugs for it. I do not know how. My father cried.”— Waraporn L., Phuket Town
| Location | Dibuk Road, Phuket Town |
|---|---|
| Full service | 2,400฿ |
| Platen recovering | 1,900฿ |
| Escapement repair | Quoted |
| Ribbons | In stock, black and red |
| Turnaround | 2 weeks; 4 if the platen is recovered |