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how I am making a dingy yellowed phone , almost its original white again

Started by markosjal, January 07, 2017, 05:29:04 AM

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markosjal

Do not try this at home folks. Do it in the backyard. DO NOT breathe, and wear protective cloting. If you later develop a respiratorry desease or a rare skin infection or a wart on your toe do not blame me .  Google tells me that I should not mix oxyclean with bleach and that the label says so . I can not read the label as it is covered up with a spanish label with the importer's name and other info in Spanish, but no visible warnning in Enlish or Spanish. So therefore assume it is a toxic mix (I know it's true cause I read it on the Internet) . Probably however not nearly as bad as breathing fine plastic particles.
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The victim here is an Indetel a dime a dozen here in Mexico. These were also sold with tacky racing stripe decals as "ITT Own a Phone" in the USA. It has a plastic base of the same plastic and same color as the upper housing . The upper part of the base is visible from all sides, so discolorations between base plate and upper housing show.
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I had bought some oxyclean and while stilll looking for some other components like peroxide to make the cleaning whitening paste, I reassembled the plastic base on to a white phone I had sanded and steel wooled , and bleached. I followed that up with turtle wax. I thought the upper housing could not get too much better. (WRONG!)

The problem I had was although I worked on the visible parts of the base (I did almost nothing to the underside) it still didn't match well with the upper housing. On one side the base was whiter than upper housing and on other side the upper housing was whiter than the base.  Overall however the base was more yellowed, and a horrible match.

I stripped the components from the base and decided to throw it in the  tub with hot water oxyclean and a simple green clone. As I walked away I remembered I had bleached the upper housing so why not a little bleach too (Okay a lot) . What ensued was a chemical reaction like putting ice cream in soda pop.

I left the base soaking for several hours. When I pulled it out later as I rubbed a fine steel wool across it I could see the yellowing come off. ( this was like a very fine SOS pad. I buy three brands and this is the finest of the three brands). It did not get off  ALL of the yellowing but 90% of it and it seemed so effortless.

After drying it, I compared it to the upper housing. OOPS a new problem It is now whiter than the upper housing that I spent so many hours on

So I decided to take the oxyclean and mix it with a little bleach while it was foaming and I was applying, and holding my breath and using a brush to apply it to the darker parts of the upper housing. God only knows what kind of toxins the mix creates. The upper housing was more yellowed towards the front. After letting the oxygoo sit I went over it with a wet soapy steell wool pad creating probably another toxic chemical reaction.

After the upper housing dried, I could now plainly see the front where I brushed on the oxygoo was reddish and the rear was greenish. Was this because It took on the green from the turtle wax? The front though looked redder than it had been before this treatment.

however on turning the upper housing over I realized the inside of the housing had not shown much yellowing and even scraping the inside of it (to reveal true original color)  I could see the front of the phone was very close to the same color (original) as the inside of the upper housing. this far exceeded my expectations but I was on the verge of a three tone phone, and I do not mean 3TMF.

The base of the phone surprisingly had much less discoloration even where I did not use the steel wool, just from soaking in the bleach, oxyclean simple green (OxyGoo). In fact it was very close to the upper housing that I had spent so much time on.

Tonight I dumped the upper housing into the oxyclean and bleach as I held my breath mixing the deadly toxic combination. I did not use the simple green to see what happens.

I decided why not try the handset cord too as it is yellowed in spots.

Tomorrow I will see if my white phone is three toned or all a more consistent cleaner white, or if the handset cord crumbles. i think it will be whiter even if it falls apart.. Lets hope I have a closer match of the base, upper housing and not to mention the handset

if you experiment with this see my warning at the top of this post and let me know how it works out for you.











 
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish

andre_janew

I'd love to see some photos of your phone.  I'm curious as to how it turned out.

markosjal

this gave me i would say 90% of the original color where I had previously worked on it.

on the very bottom of the base plate where I did absolutely nothing other than soak it it gave me 80% recovered color and no damage to the sticker. in this case.

I will be posting photos later

Also the plungers on this phone were horribly yellowed and nothing seemed to clean them . They are a different kind of plastic.  The oxyclen/Bleach worked miracles on them .

The curly cord seems to have survived the toxic mix and is slightly whiter than it was overall. the dark patches remain however less severe.

I had worked so hard to come up with the right tone of Ivory for the line cord now I need to go back and look at my Ivory/white cords again to find a better match now that the phone is whiter.

Mark
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish