Cord / Color Restoration

[Jester]

After reading the many posts here and asking some of my own questions concerning cord repair and retightening the coils, I decided to apply the theories to my own projects.  My first attempt at this is the grey spring cord on my Oxford two tone.  As I mentioned on another thread, this cord had a break in the outer cover just after the first coil, as well as the obvious stretching.  After removing the crimp 7 restraining sleeve from the handset end, I removed the broken coil & the lead into the handset, then reassembled the sleeve & crimp.  I then coiled the cord onto one of my 3/8" ratchet extentions and set it in the sun on Sunday afternoon.  On Monday afternoon, I stuck it in the freezer for @ 3 hours, then let it thaw to room temp. overnight.  When I removed it from the extention, the coils still felt relaxed & stretched out.   Thinking I didn't have enough heat in the cord before I tried to cool it, I wrapped it back around the extention & rigged a way to hang the whole thing in the oven & heated it in a controlled  environment for 2 hrs.  I then repeated the freezer, thaw & rechecked-- & got the same results.   I thought at this point that I must not have had the cord wrapped tightly enough around the extention, and heating it was making "grow", thus setting it to be permanently relaxed.  I was all set to do the same things one more time this morning when I remembered something Dennis wrote-- and instead reversed the coils, starting at the base end & working up to the handset end.   Below is the before, after & reassembled-to-the-phone pics.  I can't thank those who discussed this topic enough for these results.

[JorgeAmely]

Sir:

You are the cord man now. Looks like a million bucks. 

[Jester]

Thanks, Jorge-- couldn't have done it without you!!  I'm working on that red one now.

[Dennis Markham]

Nice job.  It looks great.  What a great phone!

[Jester]

Thanks Dennis,
It's fun to finally learn a few things that help show these plastic bodies at their best.  I've enjoyed restoring the metal phones for awhile now, but even the worst of those respond well to the 3R approach-- Repair, Repaint, Replace.  These tenite covers & handsets & the vinylite covered cords are new territory for me.  If they looked bad when I first saw them, I used to pass them by.  This forum has taught me to be more adventurous.

[Dennis Markham]

I agree.  I think I learned to look at things differently.  I could be looking at a phone with a non-phone person and we'd both be seeing something different.  You must look at it's potential.  It reminds me of a man I know that has owned a very successful small Coney Island hot dog business for nearly 40 years now.  He once told me that when he looked at the vacant lot he could smell hot dogs cooking. 

Turning a sow's ear into a silk purse is a lot of the fun...after the fun of finding the phone in the first place.

[McHeath]

Well done indeed!   Looks great on that phone, really adds to it. 

[AET]

Very nicely done, I'd swear that's a brand new cord!!!!

[bingster]

Beautiful job, Jester!  What temp did you use on the oven?

[Jester]

Thanks, Bingster!
I have a gas oven, so I set the oven at 200- 210 degrees.  I wasn't sure it would affect what I was "cooking", but my experience with gas heat has taught me to start 20 to 40 degrees lower than recommended & leave in 15 to 20 minutes less than with electric heat.

[Dan/Panther]

Dennis;
Last night I was cleaning up my newest phone case, and I also could smell Hot Dogs cooking ?
Then my kids asked me; "when was dinner going to done?"
D/P

[Jester]

It seems to be easy to get distracted around here.  If you have read the postings above, you'll recall I mentioned a red handset cord that I wanted to repair.  I had actually started it around the time I started this thread, but I didn't finish it until this afternoon.  This cord had two burn marks about a coil length apart, right in the middle of the cord length. After I removed the damaged coil, I think I counted 18 coils in front of the exposed conductors & 17 behind them-- almost dead center in the cord run.  The idea behind the repair was 1)remove the damage 2)push the cover back over the conductors until the two parts were touching 3)reshape the part that got moved-- all that pushing & yanking REALLY distorts the shape of the coils 4) glue the joint together.  After the outer cover was glued together, I wrapped the whole thing around the extention again & stuck it on the dashboard of the car for a couple days.  It then went to the freezer for 5 hours, then thawed to room temp. over a couple more.  After that, I wanted to address the fading this cover had gone through.  You could still tell it was supposed to be cherry red, but it now had that sickly brownish off-red look that baked cherries have.  Well, I wasn't sticking that back on my 500, so I took a crash coarse in the Dan/Panther School of Cord Dyeing.  The results of this are in the last picture.   

[JorgeAmely]

Jester:

Congratulations! Excellent work on that vintage cord.

I have found that very hot water helps in sliding the outer jacket until the sections meet. Removing and later re-installing one of the crimps helps also.

[Jester]

Jorge,
You are so right about both those points.  I was trying to be brief and I didn't mention it, but I did remove the lower crimp & stick the cord under hot tap water while attempting to move that outer jacket.  Also, since I had so much area to move, I soaked that part in boiling water for 5 minutes to help loosen it from the conductors.  I figured it couldn't hurt.

[McHeath]

Wow!  Simply amazing work!