reply to u/Away-Lavishness-4853 at https://reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1tykizl/which_platens_are_interchangeable/ Which platens are interchangeable?

You're really asking either the wrong question or a moot one.
Platens are generally good for about 24-40 years and then need to be recovered. Some machines had exchangeable platens for office use to have different levels of hardness for specific uses, but finding a machine with an extra these days is pretty much non-existent.
For most people if you had a parts machine for which you could "swap" a platen out you'd have to search far and wide for someone who may have gotten a recovered one in the late 80s or maybe early 90s to hope for something passable. Then there's the cost of buying and potentially shipping that machine. I've collected over 70 machines and only one of them had a platen that I would even consider "passable".
Ultimately for $90-150 to recover your platen via J. J. Short, it's much cheaper to just get your platen done and have something that'll last you a few decades.
