Have you ever noticed...

[bingster]

Have you ever noticed that pink soft plastic smells sweeter than black or red?  I don't have any other colors to sniff, but I wonder if the other colors have different smells like pink does.

[Phonesrfun]

I always thought black soft plastic usually smells like barf. 

-Bill

[Sargeguy]

Have you been huffing soft plastic again???

[jsowers]

The darker colors tend to be more pungent. Especially inside the handset area. Sort of a barf-bad breath-earwax smell. Moss green, dark gray and dark beige seem to me to be the strongest.

I have a collector friend in California whose nice library shelf cabinet full of soft plastic phones of all colors suddenly shattered the tempered glass door that covered the entire front of the shelves. It happened this past weekend and he was in the other room and nobody else was in the house. It didn't damage the phones, fortunately, but glass shards went everywhere. I admit I poked fun at the predicament, since no phones or people were hurt, musing that maybe all that outgassing built up inside there and, well, passed a big collective gas bomb and shattered the door. 

I think a more likely explanation is it had a small crack and suddenly spread, kind of like a car windshield. You know how they have those earthquakes in California.

[Jester]

Jonathan,
Your last two sentences make the most sense, but the thought of a collective "phone fart" is hilarious!

[foots]

I've got a black '58 545 that has no smell at all. My white soft plastic '59 is also free of stink. I will admit that the handset on my '51 Connecticut (I think its soft plastic) smells like an old closet, but again, no puke smell.

[jsowers]

Here's the picture of the cabinet where the glass broke. It belongs to a collector friend in California. He thinks the door frame was too flimsy for the heavy glass and it may have warped a little and put the glass in a bind and it just shattered.

I'd like to point out it's a great collection too, and very neatly displayed. He doesn't think anything was harmed by the glass breaking. He added shelves to it to accommodate more phones. The two large ones at the bottom are WE Panel Phones. The glass shards look sort of like diamonds. The rest of the glass finally fell after this picture was taken and made a huge mess on the floor.

[Jester]

I think your friend is right-- tempered glass that size is HEAVY and won't take alot of flexing.  Considering the width of the cabinet, two doors would work much better.  It will hide the display somewhat, but alot less than that faux windowpane grill that is in the current door.  As for lack of damage, one of the great things about tempered glass is it is almost harmless when it shatters-- but VERY messy!  BTW that's a great collection.  It looks like your friend has nearly all the mini 500's, too. Where's the turquiose?

[HobieSport]

Tempered glass is strange stuff. We dismantled a green house made of large sheets of it. You could wack the glass in the middle with a hammer and nothing would happen, but if you tapped the edge of the glass, while under any tension, it would practically explode into those messy smithereens. What about replacing it with plate glass? Would that be a safety issue?

Great phone collection. Makes me want to open them all up and smell them.

[jsowers]

BTW that's a great collection.  It looks like your friend has nearly all the mini 500's, too. Where's the turquiose?

Coincidentally he was on his way to the cabinet to put the turquoise 500 in there when he discovered the damage. There's one empty spot and he was going to fill it. It's not soft plastic, but it's another color and the earliest ones (1963 and 64 models) have the same hollow center fingerwheel.

What about replacing it with plate glass? Would that be a safety issue?

Great phone collection. Makes me want to open them all up and smell them.

He was thinking he would leave it alone with no glass. He has another similar cabinet, but with two doors, and it's fine. I was wondering about Plexiglas or just clear plastic.

As for opening and smelling, maybe something can be arranged if you're anywhere near LA or San Bernardino? Just send me a private email.

[Dennis Markham]

It looks like he has a set of those small salesman samples in there too.  I have seen those go pretty high on eBay.  Nice collection.

I have a Turquoise that is hard plastic from 1964 with the soft center finger wheel.  I believe 1964 was the first year for Turquoise.  At least according to Paul F's site.  That phone can be seen here:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=530.0

Having them behind glass is not a bad idea I suppose if done in a  more solid frame.  UV filtering glass is available and sure would help keep them from getting discolored from ultra violet light.  And if one were going to get really fancy maybe a small fan, like an old computer fan would be turned on to keep the air circulating at times...with some vents in the side of the cabinet.

A great collection of phones.  Thankfully they were not damaged by the glass fragments.

[jsowers]

Dennis, you are correct, sir! It was 1964 when turquoise started. I don't know where I got 1963. I guess since I had just started kindergarten in 1963, I wasn't too aware of phones then.    Some of my earliest memories are of watching Kennedy's funeral from that year.

About the library cabinet, it's already fixed. My friend got a 27" x 45" piece of plexiglass and installed it in the door and it looks great. He also said it took two hours to clean up all the broken glass. The light beige is out for inspection and the turquoise is in. You know how it is with large families. One of them is always sick. 

I like how he put the older, darker colors on top and the later pastel ones on the bottom. Everything goes together well. The moss green is one of those 1957 ones with green cords. I know because I gave it to him years ago after I replaced it in my displayed phones.

This plexiglass has UV protection built into it, according to the glass vendor. He decided not to put in a fan or a vent.

[Dennis Markham]

That is a very nice display.  I wish I were a cabinet maker.  I might slant the shelves slightly, lower in front---or are these slanted?  The fan and vent was just a crazy idea, to eliminate gassing vapors from the soft plastic.  I'll bet little vents would be good enough.

Speaking of gassing, and speaking of "have you ever noticed"....have you ever noticed how the mounting rubber on the C-Series ringers emit a gas over time?  They actually stain the plastic where there is no ventilation.  I have a soft plastic 554 in Light Gray that is stained completely through the plastic housing.  Many of the light colored housing show signs of staining on the inside of the plastic.  

I remembered I had a couple pictures of the staining.  Also note where someone wrote on the phone with marker "3.00".  At one time that's all they wanted for the phone.  I paid a little bit more for it than that.  I have done nothing to it since I got it.  I will attempt to remove the marker, which will probably be easy.  The stain?  I'm not so sure it will ever come out since the stain appears to be through the entire thickness of the plastic.  Too bad, it's a very nice example of a soft plastic 554.

And on the third photo of the pink phone that we've all seen, look just above the 59.  You can see light discoloration.  For those that were not aware of this, I'm sure if you watch for it you'll see the yellowing in alignment with the ringer bell mounting on Western Electric sets.  If you look at the ringers themselves you'll see the brown staining around the rubber grommets.

[JorgeAmely]

Dennis:

Time to remove those pesky ringers.   

[McHeath]

Like how the display has Daddy 302 sitting on top of his brood of pesky Boomer 500 kids.   

Some of my phones are stained yellow on the inside near the ringer gaskets, guess it was common.  As for venting the phone display, it's curious why that glass exploded like that, wonder if the floor or something was off square? 

I've got a long ways to go to get a phone collection like that.