When is a plastic discolored phone past the point of no return?

[TelePlay]

...and that this word has a different meaning for at least the German speaking members

Taps, tapsen = to pitter patter your feet or paws

Haf,

You are not wrong. That is part of the history, which I left out because the contest of "Taps" that Pourme set up was death and burial, goes to the full origin statement from Wikipedia which supports your experience with "Taps" over there.

"Taps" originates from the Dutch taptoe, meaning "close the (beer) taps (and send the troops back to camp)". An alternative explanation, however, is that it carried over from a term already in use before the American Civil War. Three single, slow drum beats were struck after the sounding of the Tattoo or "Extinguish Lights". This signal was known as the "Drum Taps", "The Taps", or simply as "Taps" in soldier's slang.

As for the replies, I think the challenge flag has been thrown down and I'm always up to a challenge, especially this summer when all of my time can be devoted to phones instead of moderating.

[TelePlay]

Someone once said if you have no expectations, you will never be disappointed. Well, a disappointment early evening gave me the anger to go after this phone.

Had to fix the ringer (had to take it out and take it apart to do so) but once it was working, all that was left was the color.

The lower right side is after about 15 minutes of work. The discolored burnt orange was so hard, I had to use full strength acetone to cut it off and then went to 70% acetone in denatured alcohol to "smooth" out the pure acetone surface. 400 grit wet sandpaper to remove the haze, then 600 and 800. Will do the left side before going to higher grits. Stopped an half a side to show the difference. It's a very nice yellow under that burnt orange. Shouldn't take more than an hour or hour and a half to do all the plastics (the top and handset).

I'm doing this with the expectation that I will sell this phone for more than $100 plus shipping.

[FABphones]

I can't wait to see how the handset comes up.

Waaaay off my colour scheme but I'd enjoy doing that one, the basket effect on the side will be interesting to work on.

[TelePlay]

Progressing on this phone, I finished the top and it turned out nice. Still only at 600 grit dull, sanding up and polishing will come later.

I discovered a helper to removing discolored plastic with pure acetone (highly discolored plastic). After wetting my cotton ball backed high bite cloth swab, I dab it onto a small pile of baking soda I have placed on the corner of my work area and immediately go to the plastic. The undissolved baking soda picked up by the solvent wet swab adds a bit of bite to the acetone and seems to even out the rubbing in that once the discolored plastic is removed with the acetone swab and soda, the surface is not as rough, doesn't show the cloth marks, as when I just used acetone on the cloth. This greatly reduces sanding.

After removing the discolored plastic, I go to a new cotton ball backed high bite cloth swab and wet it with my 10-10-80% acetone/MEK/denatured alcohol solution and dab that into the baking soda. This goes a long way to removing the white haze and ends up with a surface that is similar to 800 grit wet sandpaper but without the 800 grit marks. This adding soda to the 10-10-80 mixture between grits as I work up to 2000 may speed up the process and result in a better final shine. Stay tuned for that.

The wicker slides easily off of the base. The wicker is actual on a plastic backing which slides off of the phone base.

The other image below shows the front and back of the base without the wicker. It is interesting that the front behind the plastic backer wicker is a bit darker than the back of the phone. It may be a bit hard to see in the images but the front undeer the wicker is a bit darker than the back under the wicker indicating that long term UV radiation actually made it through the wicker to darken the front behind the wicker.

The ring at the base on the front side of the phone is burnt orange while the back ring is very close to the original yellow color. Next step is to get the ring back to yellow.

[Haf]

A very remarkable result so far, very nice. And your improvemengt with the baking soda sounds promising. So restoring even this phone has still brought you to some new conclusions and techniques. Good to hear and thanks for sharing!

Haf 

[Key2871]

Agreed, and I must say I'm glad you chose to restore it.
One less phone for the dumpster.

[Greg G.]

I don't restore telephones. I buy them and look at them. (then pack them away and buy more)

HA!  I used to do that too!

No matter how discolored , cracked, broken  a phone might be, It always has some use as a practice piece for new restoration techniques.

I would save it until you find a new restoration technique to try.
Just my opinion,
Jim S.

I was going to say the same thing, practice your skills.

[TelePlay]

Continuing, I did the band at the bottom of the base and the handset tonight.

I won't sugar coat this. The base was easy but the handset was so discolored, acetone didn't even cut the burnt orange so I had to resort to scoring the burnt orange with 320 grit dry sandpaper to allow the acetone to get under the discoloration. Besides that, there was a lot of bad plastic removed with the pure acetone which migrated into the K Handset grooves requiring me to remove that plastic after the handset discoloration was gone, before the soft plastic in the grooves hardened.

I have a surgical steel K-wire with a flat sharp point on one end and a blunt round on the other end. That worked well to remove the still soft but hardening plastic in the grooves. The wire is exactly the width of the handset grooves.

When the burn orange was gone, the entire handset was one big "Oh No!" All of the handset surfaces were not pretty, actually, quite ugly. Makes one think, what the heck did I just do, get into. The surface was not anywhere near smooth and some of the removed burnt orange plastic re-hardened on the bright yellow. Rather than do the normal restoration process (10-10-80 with soda, then sanding up), I went right to the brute force sanding process, 329 grit dry paper on a sanding block until all of the solvent grooves were gone, the surface was flat and any of the dark plastic still on in small spots were sanded off.

The big problem here was the really hard burnt orange plastic which did not dissolve with acetone (just like those chips from by toasted ivory 302 that are still soaking in acetone now for 3 months and not dissolved) but the less discolored plastic and the plastic under the removed discoloration was easily dissolved with acetone leaving the areas that were done very susceptible to acetone runs and cloth marks. I've had this happen to me before and there is not way to get around it other than to use brute force stripping and sanding. The saving grace is whatever is left after the discoloration is removed, no matter how ugly, it can be easily sanded smooth because the original color plastic now exposed is soft and easily sanded.

Chemical sanding works but it is different for each plastic and each phone and "Oh,No!" are to be expected. The learning process is figuring out a good and fast way to recover for each new, first time ever seen "Oh, No!" I have yet to ruin (do something that goes beyond repair) any plastic part on any phone.

After the complete 320 grit dry sanding, I went to the 10-10-80 mixture to get rid of the high spots left by the 320 grit paper. At that point I was very happy with what I was holding, the handset, so stopped for the night. The handset turned out quite nice compared to what it looked like at the Oh, No! stage. I have about 4 hours into the restoration not including ringer repair or dial cleaning.

All that remains to do is clean out the grooves and bring the handset up to 2000 grit wet paper and then polishing with Novus 2.

This is what it looks like on my bench tonight - before (left) and after but not finished (right) images were taken in the same place with the same light to show the improvement.

[Key2871]

Very nice! Yes it's a lot of work, but isn't the end result worth the hard work?

[HarrySmith]

Nice. It's going to look like brand new when you are finished. Any collector of these type phones will love to have it.

[Pourme]

I think "Taps" has turned into The "Rocky" theme!...Looking good!

[TelePlay]

The above before and after images show the after with a dull, sanded finish.

After cleaning out the handset grooves this morning, I took the handset flat from 600 grit to 2000 grit (using the 10-10-80 solvent with baking soda on high bite cloth) and two applications of Novus (the first mixed with my 10-10-80 solvent) using soft cotton cloth. The baking soda did help in that the amount of time spent with each increasingly higher grit was shorter, about 30 to 45 seconds with each wet grit (the surface was rinsed with water after each solvent/soda application to get rid of the soda residue before going to the next higher sandpaper grit).

This shows the true color of the original plastic (might be a bit off due to the fluorescent tube lighting) and the quality of the sanded surface. I check for flatness by looking at the piece of string (red/white arrow) that vertically crosses the light, the straightness of the light tubes themselves (red/pink arrow) and the quality of the small plastic hemostat (green/white arrow) and the paper clamps (red/pink arrow) that I have attached to the front edge of the front fluorescent light reflector.

The handset flat is not perfectly flat (with its normal curvature) but it's pretty close given the amount of plastic that was removed to get rid of the burnt orange discoloration. Took me less than 10 minutes to go from 600 grit dull to reasonably polished.

Posting this in detail in case anyone wants to try this, so they will have all of the "tools" to end up with similar results. Will do the rest of the phone tonight.

[FABphones]

As usual I am totally in awe of your results. You are soooooooo thorough. 

[TelePlay]

Except for the finger wheel (waiting for a number card) and a handset cord, the yellow Accent is once again yellow and finished.

The final color, after sanding up to 2000 grit and then polishing with Novus 2 results in a deep, rich yellow which matches the yellow inside the case and on the bottom of the case.

I used Howard's dark Restore-A-Finish on the wicker to get some oil backing to wood.

All of these photos were take in the same place, same light source for a reasonably good comparison.

I will take eBay photos after I find a cord and post them here to finalize this project.

[HarrySmith]

That is nice! Great job. Another one saved.