AE Dial Restoration

[FABphones]

Thought some members might be interested to see this AE dial.

I don't know quite what the white coating was. It had the texture of gritty wax, fairly thick, and it had spread inside.

Getting the fingerwheel off was the hardest part. Got the dial card holder off easily enough (really nice original card) but the centre screw was firm. I tried leaving it a few days with a spray or two of WD40, and even a dab or three of dial oil. Neither did the trick. In the end it took brute force (not mine) to get it free.

Once off, the plastic parts were soaked in dishwash liquid. The coating softened enough for removal without the fear of scratching the facia, and it turned out to be better than expected under that odd bloom.

Can anyone help me date this?

The dial was seized. I managed to get it turning again with compressed air, contact cleaner and dial oil, however, that odd coating will no doubt have worked its way right down into the dial mechanism and nothing short of a total strip down would really be doing right by this dial.

So, I've taken the plunge and a Digital Ultrasonic Cleaner is on order. Lots of good threads on here to help me through the strip down process - my first - so my thanks to Teleplay for his threads and comprehensive explanations, and to ktown whose posts and previous help will also come in really handy.

[jsowers]

The white coating was mold that was generated by the Tenite being in a damp environment. It came from inside the plastic and my theory is they may have been a little dodgy with the cleaning of the mold forms (mold as in molded plastic and not moldy plastic) so maybe they had a few mold spores trapped in the plastic somewhere, just waiting for dampness to multiply and bloom. And because later dial faces didn't seem to mold as badly as the early ones, maybe they figured out they needed to take some extra steps in cleaning to prevent mold from forming.

These dial faces, or bezels, were the first ones injection molded with contrasting color plastic for the letters and numbers, so there was ample opportunity to introduce something like mold, which is invisible when it's just a spore. Tenite is organic, BTW, made from soft wood and not fossil fuels.

The dial you have is from an early AE80 or AE90. The first black 80s and 90s had metal fingerwheels and that changed when WE changed to clear plastic fingerwheels on their black 500s and 554s, about 1965. So it was made anywhere from 1955-1965.

I'll never forget my Dad's office in the 1960s and my Uncle Max's desk (he was finance officer and the receptionist). It was a building contractor and they had two lines. Instead of using a 2-line phone, they used two phones, a full chrome black AE40 and a black AE80 that looked newer but plainer. You could call one phone from the other and I was always fascinated with that when dad would bring me to his office on weekends. That AE80 was one of those with the black fingerwheel and it was the "new" phone. 

[HarrySmith]

WOW! That number ring was nasty. It cleaned up nicely though. Don't forget to clean the slot for the fingerstop, still looks dirty in there. What does the inside of the dial look like? Is it as bad as the outside? I think Jonathan is right, looks like mold, I have had a few older 500's that looked like that. The biggest problem is it keeps coming back after a little while. I tried a few different things to clean the phone with to keep it from coming back. Lysol seems to work best but it needs a good long soak to work for any length of time.

[oldguy]

Great Job, that dial looks great now.

[Pourme]

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That dial was as nasty as any I have seen. You saved another from the junk pile. You are doing great work!

[tubaman]

Great work FABphones!
Nice original dial card too - I love getting those in any of my phones.

[FABphones]

Thanks guys, and thanks for the info.

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Harry, I daren't strip the dial until the Ultrasonic arrives (so I can do it in one session), but meantime I have added another photo (above) of the other side of dial. And I made sure to give the numberplate and reverse another thorough cleaning with anti-bac after the photos too thanks.

Tubaman, thank you, it's probably my favourite dialcard so far, except everytime I read it I can't get the song 'Jackson' out of my head...