Empty out AE40 shell

[tex]

First timer here. Hello everyone! At first I was super thrilled about this website. Now, after much reading I realize that you people aren't going to help me, you are going to make my habit worse! Im salivating over all these finds and wanting to BUY BUY BUY more phones.  I read this forum all night last night and then dreamt of phones.  This site is SOOOOO helpful and fascinating. So, here is my question, and if I missed this in the archives, please direct me to where I can go. I bought a beautiful AE40. Shell is in great shape, but needs to be polished. I saw in all the other posts that you somehow just had the shell that was getting polished and had set aside the mechanicals. How do I get the shell separated from the innards? I have removed the bottom and have all the guts exposed. Do I just unscrew all the screws? How many screws are attaching the mechanicals to the bakelite shell?  I dont want to mess anything up and take something apart that doesn't need to be dis-assembled. Thanks in advance for all your help! Also. my AE40 has a finger dial that seems to be brass. Is it really brass, or is this just really worn and began as painted or chrome or whatever? I look forward to hearing from you!

[JorgeAmely]

Hi Tex and welcome to the madness, sorry, forum:

The problem with the AE40 is that many components are soldered on place. To remove everything, you would have to unsolder things and later re-solder everything in place again.

I have done a couple of AE40s and you really don't need to remove components (like coils and capacitor, if so equipped) to polish the housing. In many cases, the bottom base can be removed by unscrewing terminals at the ringer.

The screws at the housing at just to keep the handset and mounting cords in place. If you remove them all the way, you will still have wires soldered to lugs attached to these terminals..

When I polished my AE40 housing (and any bakelite housing), I stuff a towel inside to dampen any vibrations caused by a orbital polisher (Ryobi RB60) that could crack the housing.

Send tons of pictures and good luck.

[Greg G.]

Howdy Tex!  Welcome to our forum!

I don't know anything about AE40s, but a good basic tool of the trade is a digital camera.  Taking pictures before you start unhooking wires as saved my ass many a times.  But even then, just a quick posting here of a pic of the phone has never failed me in getting an answer back as to why it worked before and now it doesn't.

Craigslist is your friend in finding phones.