wiring candlestick to ringer box

[dfuller]

I currently own three wall type magneto phones, An Ericsson B2138 wall phone,  a Western Electric  compact wall phone, another not sure of the type, and a field phone. I am also wired to my parents phone as well.  We have them wired together and use as a intercom.  All have a 6 volt battery to each of them except field phone.  
My question is, I would like to add a Candlestick that I purchased sometime ago, a 20AL I believe from looking at pictures.  I also have a small ringer box that I refinished, unsure of the type.  It doesn't have any stamped numbers or decals.  It only consists of 3 knobs where wiring can be attached, bells, but no magneto. (please see picture).  I have hooked up candlestick to current wiring and it works, but it is also attached to same wiring of another phone(field phone).  I am not sure if it is picking up power from it, or maybe it doesn't need power, please advise me on this.  
I would like to wire the ringer box to the candlestick.  I have tried to wire to box, but no ring occurs when using a crank on a different phone. Any ideas.  Can I use this box or do I need a regular subset box with a magneto.

[rdelius]

this is just an extension ringer .A subset would be better. Check the ringer coils to make sure  the impedance is high enough 500 ohms or higher. you will still need capacators and an induction coil or network
Robby

[wds]

Also, some of those older ringer boxes had DC ringers, and won't work on a modern phone line.  They were used for the old magneto phones.  Before you put a lot of effort into that ringer, make sure it's an AC ringer.

[dfuller]

I am not attempting to make this work on regular phone line, I am using only the magneto phones  to other magneto phones in the home, just from say the basement to 2nd story.  I can ring someone upstairs and talk.  We also ran wire to the parents and can ring them as well.  When we had dial up internet, the phone line would be busy, but we could use the old phones to talk back and forth.
  What exactly would I need to make this box work, and do I need battery power to it?  I will test it, and let you know what I come  up with.  I see various diagrams, but nothing really makes sense.

[Wallphone]

Welcome to the Forum dfuller. A simple way to test your ringer is hook it up to your field phone and crank away. It looks like the terminals on your ringer were made for pin type connectors so strip about two inches of insulation off the wires and fold the bare wire in half twice. Insert the wires in the top two terminals. The bottom terminal was originally connected to a ground wire in case lightning hit the telephone wires it would give it a path to ground.
Doug Pav

[dsk]

I,m sure you may use it in an intercom setup, depending on what you are connecting to it.
Do you have a magneto generator to use with this phone?

Yes, you will need a battery to power the speech  circuit.

What kind of setup do you have in the other end? A regular magneto telephone? (Or field telephone?)

dsk

[dfuller]

I currently own three wall type magneto phones, An Ericsson B2138 wall phone,  a Western Electric  compact wall phone, another wall mounted  I believe came from a naval vessel (not sure of the type), which all have magnetos,  and a field phone.
I connected the candlestick to the Ericsson about 5 feet away with wire, and the phone worked.  I assume it was picking up power from the wall phone as I did not have a battery connected to it.
I connected the ringer box to Ericsson and cranked away, no ring.  Connected to Western Electric and it made a "tink" sound a couple times while cranking.  I noticed when I attached the wires, it also make a tink sound. Both magnetos are the 4 bar type.  The field phone did nothing.
Were do I attach to to test the coils?  The knobs on the outside?

[dsk]

I would start to control the air gaps visually. Then connect to ring and tip terminals, and measure resistance. (try if it changes when opening/closing the door) Test if the mechanical parts moves as other ringers use to. The red bar on the ringer should work as a permanent magnet.

The candle stick should easy to get in working order, I assume that you don't have a subset, you may easily make one. Do you have any parts, telephone transformer/induction coil etc? What modell of a candlestick is it. (3 or 4 wires to the subset?)

dsk

[dfuller]

I am not really clear on what the air gap is.  The resistance across the hinges was 80ohms, and across the terminals on back were 80 as well.  There was fluctuation with opening and closing the top, with ranges from 80 to 120.  I also noticed the magnet is not really strong, not sure how strong it should be though.

The mechanical parts move easily to ring the bells. 
The candlestick is a 20AL I believe, I can't really say sure. It has 3 wires. I am only going by pictures.  Maybe someone can tell me the model if they know.

[GG]

The serrated edges and air gap and ground terminal were an early method of lightning protection.  The idea being that lightning would jump the air gap and be conducted to ground rather than passing through the ringer or the person using the phone and killing one or both. 

WDS is mistaken about DC bells.  A DC bell is the same mechanism and wiring as a doorbell.  Direct current (DC) passes through the coil, causing it to magnetize.  This attracts the bell clapper to move toward the coil, striking one gong.  However in doing so, it also moves an electrical contact that opens the circuit to the bell, turning off the power to the coil, allowing it to de-energize.  At that point the clapper springs back in the opposite direction, striking the other gong.  Minus the gongs that would be a buzzer.   You can't make those buzz or ring with a magneto.   Only AC bells are used in magneto phones.  DC bells and DC buzzers are used in intercoms of various kinds, and occasionally (but not often) as common audible signals in key systems.

In any case the ringer you have is clearly an AC ringer, because it has two coils, and almost 100% of ringers with two coils are AC.  What your ringer is missing is a capacitor in series with it.  Go to any electronics store (Radio Snack will do) and buy a capacitor: nominally 0.5 microfarad at 200 volts.  Typically you will find capacitors of 0.33 and 0.47 and a few similar values, those are all OK, but they need to be rated at 200 volts or they can break down from ringing voltage (which is nominally 90 volts AC but can spike higher). 

If you don't have a volt-ohm meter, now's the time to get one.  Ideally get an analog meter rather than digital because analog will give you a better feel for the differences in circuits and voltages and so on (so says this old analog guy anyway!).   Measure the resistance across the bell terminals: it should be anywhere from 500 ohms to about 2K (2,000 ohms), and most likely is around 1K (1,000 ohms).    (If you get an infinite resistance or open circuit, then the bell coils are defective, which is repairable in theory by rewinding the coils, but in practice that's a bear of a job that nobody I know would bother with.  Keep the bell box for its historic value anyway.)

When you put a capacitor in series with the bell, you won't be able to read DC resistance: you'll get a little kick on the meter at its highest range (typically "R x 10K") and that's all, because the capacitor is blocking DC.  However that little kick on the meter tells you that you have a viable ringer circuit. 

Test your magneto by ringing a different phone first: any standard telephone (302, 500, 2500, etc.) will ring when you twirl the magneto crank.  Then try it on your bell with the capacitor installed and see what happens.

[dsk]

I would say the world is a little bit more complicated than GG states, I have seen several DC ringer with 2 coils, and 2 coils was used here (Norway) until the electronic ringers took the job. On the other hand your ringer definitely looks like an AC ringer!  The 80 ohms seems to be surprisingly low.  This ringer may have been a series ringer from the very earliest days. Still it should be able to ring when you connect it to your field telephone and cranks it. The capacitor GG mentioned may make it easier to use on a modern system.  That setup bridged over the line will probably make you loose a lot of signal strength, so when we get it working we should put in a resistor and a pair of diodes too.

That low Resistance of a ringer is only what I have been reading about, but 600 ohms has been used in e.g. German systems.

The air gap was indeed a a usable lightning arrestor, and was used on a printed board telephone circuit as late as 1967!

Depending on what you have a resistor of 300-500 ohms or a capacitor of 0,5 to 0,7 microfarad (200V)
in series with the ringer when testing could make it ring.

Here you have to do some experiments, the good thing is: No risk of ruining the ringer, or the field-telephone.

dsk