Restoring original plastic color?

[touficgramp]

I have a 67 Northern Electric desk phone that has changed the beautiful original color of Powder Blue to oxidized Aqua color now. Any tips on how to get back to new look please?

[Dan]

Blues often are a little yellowed. Is this what you mean?

[touficgramp]

naw, it looks like aqua green (very clean but no yellow It almost looks brand new like it was made aqua, lol) under hanset area you can see the true nice blue.

[bingster]

Welcome to the forum, touficgramp!

There are as many answers to this question as there are members.  Being rather lazy, myself, I tend to go for the easy methods, such as scrubbing with Bon Ami or some similar mild cleanser, followed by polishing with Brasso or something similar.  There are special plastic polishes that other members use to great effect, too.   Bathing the plastic parts in Clorox and water often makes a world of difference, too.

Those methods work great for yellowing caused by nicotine and years of accumulated dirt and grime, but if the discoloration is caused by the natural aging of the plastic, then more extreme measures are in order.  Many folks have resorted to sanding, and have made some great looking phones out of badly discolored sets.  This method is incredibly labor-intensive, but produces excellent results.  Others have adapted a process pioneered by computer collectors to restore the whiteness to old computer equipment, and information for that can be found here:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=745.0

[touficgramp]

I will do some homework on this, thanks so very much.

[McHeath]

Welcome.  I sanded a 1968 aqua blue Western Electric 1500 that was the same sort of greenish shade as yours.  It was a lot of work, but it can make a huge difference and often brings the phone back to new color condition.  In my case the discoloration was just too deep and I ended up replacing the plastics, but often it's only a surface condition and can be removed with sanding. 

Western Electric made a turquoise color in the 60's that is a greenish blue, and then a nice clean sky blue/baby blue color that they called aqua blue.  You would think that aqua blue would be the greenish color but it's not, and a phone that has the aqua blue in good condition is very bright with no hint of green. 

[Phonesrfun]

Welcome to the forum Touficgramp.

I take it that the last part indicates you are a grandpa, and many of us seem to have hit that mark in life, although we have several here who are seemingly much younger.

Bingster said it right.  There are as many answers as there are members.  I have had miserable luck with the bleaching process on colored phones that suffer from their color being bleached out to a lighter color, or an aqua phone that has turned turquise due to UV damage.  Mine turned out that the aqua turned out lighter and the part that had turned turquoise turned out a lighter turquoise and not all the way back to aqua.  I came to the conclusion that white was the only reliable candidate for bleaching.

I know nothing about the chemical make-up of plastics, nor do I know anything about what happens during the UV exposure process, both when it is being damaged or in the part about reversing during the bleaching process.

So I leave the bleaching up to those who have had good results, and I either leave mine alone, or do the horriffic job of sanding and polishing, which is very laborious and you risk sanding out some of the defining features such as the Bell System logo, and/or some of the sharper edges of the plastics, unless you take real precautions.

It takes literally hours of painstaking sanding with various grits in various directions, starting with a medium grit like 600 and graduating to a finer grit like 1500 or 1800 all wet-sanding and using the first stage to get the plastic down to a point where you have unearthed undamaged color, and then all the next finer stages to gradually sand out all the gouges that the stage before it left, and so on and so on.

Then finish up with Novus 3-2-1.

Another thing you might do is use the search function on this forum.  I seem to recall that last spring there was a lot (I do mean a lot!) being shared about both methods.

-Bill Geurts

[Dennis Markham]

Since the topic is trying to restore color, I thought I'd post a couple photos of this Light Beige set I just finished this weekend.  This is a Western Electric 1960 model...hard plastic.  It was sent to me to be refurbished.  The phone belonged to the grandparents of the owner.  He wanted old stickers removed and to clean it up the best I could.  The stickers were very difficult to get off even with hours of soaking.  I used everything I knew and finally got them all off but of course the plastic below was the original color.

I decided to sand the plastic.  I did not sand the dial bezel or the handset caps.  I sanded the housing and the handset.  The handset cord was kinked and stiff.  I did the baking method on the cord.  Much of the elasticity was brought back as well as the shape.  It's still a bit discolored near the handset.  It's not perfect but definitely back in the ball game.  All dates from 1960.

[JorgeAmely]

Hats off to you sir. I will be sending my phones to you from now on. It just arrived on the 1960s Express via your time machine.

[Craig T]

Where is the warning to get out your shades!  There that's better, I love it! All the way around you did a fabulous job Dennis! Your customer will be thrilled, no doubt about it.

[Dennis Markham]

Thank you.  As I said, it's not perfect but much better.  He said it has been sitting in a box for 25 years.  You can see on the back where the logo is discolored, obviously as I could not sand that.  The dial card was one of those adhesive cards that was put atop of the original.  The card below had the same number but it was a Wait For Dial tone card with only a 5 digit number...no exchange name.  I could not separate them without damaging the card below so I left it alone.

[Wallphone]

Dennis, another splendid effort by you, with great results to show for it. Is there any reason why you didn't use WD-40 to get the stickers off? I don't know that much about plastic phones to know if it screws up the plastic or not. But I do know that WD-40 is the first thing I grab when I have a nasty sticker that needs to come off.
Dougpav

[Dennis Markham]

Thank you Doug.  I do use WD 40 after I soak the plastic first.  Usually after soaking in a sudsy warm/hot water the stickers will come off...using my finger nail and gently removing the glue.  But as you can see from some of the photos I needed to pull out the WD 40.  Those on the front and side came off easily but that top one between the cradle ears was really on there.  I used WD 40 to cut through the glue.  After about 90% was off I then just used Novus2 and friction to get the rest off.  But you're correct, WD 40 works good and does not harm the plastic, hard or soft.  At least that's been my experience.  I use it (WD40) for a lot of things but DO NOT use it to lubricate a dial.

I spray painted my fingers once...sprayed them with WD40 and the paint wiped right off.  It's a good versatile, product.

[LarryInMichigan]

For what it might be worth, I had a phone with impossible stickers stuck to it.  I tried every chemical I had in the house with little or no results until I decided to try the electrical contact cleaner spray.  To my surprise, the adhesive dissolved quickly after I sprayed it.  The only drawback is that the contact cleaner is a hydrocarbon chemical which evaporates almost instantly, so one has to work very quickly with it.

Larry

[jsowers]

Dennis, I use denatured alcohol on hard plastic for sticker removal and DuPont white polishing compound (which may not be available any more) for the really stubborn ones and for paint spots. It has a solvent in it that seems to penetrate well. Just don't use denatured alcohol on soft plastic.

That's a great refinishing job on the light beige phone. Do you think the dial face is soft plastic? That could be why it didn't fade the same.

You could try soaking the number cards in hot water to see if they come apart without tearing. I have tried bleaching number cards with rust stains in them in a mild bleach and water solution, and it doesn't damage the cards. It also doesn't completely remove the stain, but it can lessen it a lot.