Taking your white phones out of the closet

[Adam]

We've had many interesting, informational threads about restoring plastic that is the victim of darkening.  But do we know exactly what causes plastic phones to "age"?

I have several very nice white phones.  I take them out and display them occasionally but I'm always afraid of exposing these white phones to aging and put them right back in storage after a few days.

What exactly causes phones to darken?  Exposure to light?  Exposure to sunlight?  Exposure to artificial light?  Exposure to fluorescent light?  Other environmental factors?  Smoking?  And how long is exposure necessary to cause damage?  Are we talking days, weeks, months or years?

What are the best way to keep our new-looking phones looking new?

[gpo706]

I'd say UV exposure, smoking doesn't help especially if you smoke as much as i do 

[Greg G.]

Good question.  Not sure if keeping them in the dark will prevent them from turning yellow again in 30-40 years.  You know those little plastic covers on the underside of some dials, that cover some of the gears?  From what I've been told, they were originally clear, and they certainly haven't been exposed much.

[deedubya3800]

The ones on my #6 dials are orange. You're saying those were supposedly originally clear? My #8 dial's is clear, but it's a completely different type of material.

[Greg G.]

I guess it depends on the type of material, but at least some of them, if not many, were originally clear.

[Ed D]

Don't know much about the phone bodies, but I got a few surprises recently when I recently cleared out my cubicle to go work in my virtual office.

I had lots of things hung on the fabric wall of my old cube, and there was a bookshelf above with a 48" fluorescent light ficture under it.  Gave me some nice task lighting.

Well, when I started taking things off the wall, I noticed that most of the clear plastic items had significantly yellowed.  Some were two-tone as they were partially obscured by something else on the wall.  I even had a bookmark made of some kind of white plastic that had yellowed, but it was snow white where it was protected from the fluorescent light.

This was a no-smoking building, so no cigarette smoke staining was possible at all.

I guess it has a lot to do with the plastic material and the type of light the plastic was exposed to.

Ed

[gpo706]

Ed I agree it will depend on the plastic, but maybe also the colour temperature of the light source, as anyone here trained on an old-school video camera will tell you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#Colour_temperature

Temperature    Source

1,700 K    Match flame
1,850 K    Candle flame, sunset/sunrise
2,700–3,300 K    Incandescent light bulb
3,350 K    Studio "CP" light
3,400 K    Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.
4,100 K    Moonlight, xenon arc lamp
5,000 K    Horizon daylight
5,500–6,000 K    Vertical daylight, electronic flash
6,500 K    Daylight, overcast
9,300 K    CRT screen

[JimH]

Back in the 90s I bought a white Princess rotary from the 60s that didn't work and was badly yellowed.  The phone had a sticker on the bottom along with the "purchased" sticker that said "for service, call 800-whatever number it was.  I called the number and they (Lucent by then) said that if I sent it to them along with TEN dollars, they'd send me a replacement.  I boxed it up and what came about two weeks later was a brand new white Signature Princess!  I never took it out of the box....I'm almost afraid to now after all this time.  It has never yellowed.  There is one on ebay right now that's badly yellowed...I think it's staying in the box!