A pair of keybars needed for our keyboard

[Keri Szafir]

Does anyone have a pair of unneeded keybars - 8KA/9KA?

Our museum acquired two keyboards after the first Monotype University in Europe in 2005, but didn't get any keybars, stopbars or justifying scales. One machine was dismantled, the other has been standing in one of the back rooms ever since. I took it apart and brought the parts downstairs, cleaned and reassembled it and made some holes in the ribbon by moving the rock shafts. Tomorrow is the Long Night of the Museums and I was determined to put the lovely thing on display so that the visitors will be able to see it. All they saw until now were two super casters, one computer-controlled composition casters and two large composition machines (one partially dismantled - we keep it for spare parts).

Thanks to John we got a S5 stopbar; later on one of our colleagues bought a justifying scale on eBay. So now the only things missing are the keybars.

I'd like to get the keyboard working again for demonstration purposes, and the only thing that interests me is being able to make a ribbon with a few characters to show how the mechanisms work. I'm not planning on using the keyboard for actual typesetting because I'll be better off doing it with a control interface.
I'm not even looking for any particular number (could be e.g. 243+244 or 245, 4350+4351, 4352+4353, 10549+10553, 85001+85003 - these combinations seem pretty universal, from what I see on Alembic Press).

[Frank Hemmings]

Hi, it may be possible that the company I worked for may hae some keybars. I shall be away for the next 10 days or so but if you still need keybars let me know and I will try to let you have more info on my return.
Frank H.