Antique Show finds

[NorthernElectric]

I headed south to Orillia today to attend an Antique show.  It was held at the fairgrounds and mostly outdoors so I was hoping for more of a flea market atmosphere than some of the shows I have been to.  With a bit of a drive what was forecast to be a hot day, and with the A/C in my old heap not surviving the winter, I was hoping the trip would be worthwhile.  I only came home with 2 finds, but happy with what I got.

There were quite a few phones there, but the majority were overpriced 500 series, plus a few woodies.  I don't really have a handle on what those are worth and and except for some wooden subsets, I am not terribly interested in them.  I did find an AE 40 in one of the booths, and the asking price was reasonable.  The seller said 'it works except it doesn't ring' so I told him I'd need to take a look inside and he obliged me with a screw driver (if he didn't have one, I'd have gone to the car for one).  The ringer was missing a bell and was unlabeled.  The bell that was there appeared to be attached with a non-original screw.  The wiring diagram didn't have a frequency written in the blank provided, so I took a chance that it was an SL ringer and that the failure to ring was due to either the ringer being grounded or the bell issues.   The only other apparent problem was the gasket was torn.  I dickered with the seller and got it for $25CDN.  DavePEI, this one was made in Brockville.

I also got a Telechron 4F69 'Traymore' clock for $10CDN.  More about that here.

[.....]

Looks good. Great find.

[NorthernElectric]

...The ringer was missing a bell...

The one bell that was in the phone looked to be around the same size as those found on a C4 ringer.  I had a spare one of those so I thought I would see if I could swap out the bell for the C4 bells temporarily until I found a set of AE bells.  Earlier this week, I found my spare C4 ringer and got the bells off it.  When I went to install them, I discovered that the existing bell was not an AE bell at all, but also from a C4 ringer!     Anyway I installed the bells using screws from a 104 coil that I wasn't using, adjusted them, and the ringer sounds great (if not authentic).

Since then, I have connected it to my line and have been using it.  Today I decided that since I was using it, it must have a number card, so I made one.  Starting with a scanned AE card image that I downloaded, I vectorized it in InkScape, added my number, printed it, cut it out, and here it is.

[HarrySmith]

Cool! Looks good, I always liked these. I have sold a few of them, they clean up nicely.