This is why I buy broken parts

[Desert Phone Guy]

I often will make what I sometimes think is a dumb purchase.  An example is the photo of the two sad broken pony receivers I have posted below.  One was a mall find at $11, and the other was an ebay purchase at $23.

Today was a nice afternoon, so I thought I would see what I could do with the two.

After disassembling, unsoldering, cleaning, polishing, reassembling, and resoldering, I think I have finished up with a fairly decent working pony receiver...  Plus I have some more parts to use on another project.

Working on things like this I find to be great mental therapy.

Retired in Arizona...

[Doug Rose]

Nice job Steve....really cool turnaround....Doug

[Key2871]

Excellent job, Steve. It pays in the end withvthe satisfaction of breathing new life into something that old.

[Dan/Panther]

I have a WE317E wall phone that I've had for years. The Pony Receiver was missing. I finally found a broken one, that I was able to restore to absolutely perfect condition. I have no plans of ever selling the phone, and no one will ever know.

D/P

[19and41]

Handsome unit!

[HarrySmith]

I have a broken one also. I picked it up from eBay on the cheap. Been looking for another to get the parts I need. It is broken in almost the exact same place as yours, the cap where the wiring connections are. Mine also has a chip in the cap. Still looking for parts!

[Ktownphoneco]

Just a word about broken receiver shells, especially 122W OST receivers.     If one breaks, and you have all the pieces, in probably 50 to 60 percent of the time they can be put back together.    I use  crazy glue, both the instant stuff, and the super thin type ( thin, medium and thick crazy glue is usually available from hobby stores that sell model radio controlled boats, aircraft, racers, etc., etc.)
(Check with John "Teleplay", he's done some research on the subject of thin type crazy glues).
The thin, medium and thick crazy glues go by another name, but that' basically what it is.     

I use the thin stuff on cracks in receiver shells, and the normal crazy glue to put "pieces" back together.    Attached is a "pdf" picture file of a badly broken and sun damaged hard rubber 122W receiver shell.     It's careful pains taking work, but the results are excellent as you can see in the pictures of the finished receiver.    I also polished and re-nickeled the exterior hardware.   (Ignore the lint that I didn't see but my digital camera did.)     I did that repair a year ago, and the customer was very happy with the results.    The break seams are totally invisible.    The important thing to remember, is dry fit all the pieces first, and make sure they will all assemble back together properly.      You will find that in a lot of cases, they may need to be reassembled in a specific order, which may not seem logical at first.   It probably has something to do with the way it broke, as in which pieces broke and separated from the shell first.    The other important thing to remember, is make sure to carefully separate and protect the broken pieces until the repair is performed.     Sometimes there are very small chips that will form on or near the edges of the break in some or all pieces.      It's important to make sure they don't get knocked off while waiting for the repair to take place.    Tiny missing chips create little pock marks which just make more work when repairing the receiver shell.

Pictures in the attached "pdf".

Jeff Lamb

[HarrySmith]

Nice work Jeff! That looks brand new! Did you paint it or just polish?
I do not have the pieces for the one I have so that repair is not possible for me.

[Ktownphoneco]

Thanks Harry.   "NO PAINT",  just polished.      The hard rubber receiver shells were pure black when they were made.     Sun light causes them to discolor to brown.    I have a 122W shell sitting in a cupboard that gets no sunlight exposure.     I polished it to a "black pearl" shine, about 8 years ago, and put it in a cupboard that gets "no" sunlight.   It's still as black and shiny as the day I put it in there.   I have a couple upstairs in the family room that I polished probably 5 or 6 years ago, but they get daily exposure to indirect sunlight, and they're starting to go back to brown.

Jeff

[Key2871]

When in the ATCA, I read about restoring faded receivers. And one of the suggestions was to use lamp black to bring the black color back. Or black shoe polish.
On my receiver I tried the latter and it worked fair, it didn't "hide" all the discoloration, but it did pretty good. Another thing that was suggested was to remove the top layer of rubber to try and get past the discoloration, by sanding with fine grit. I tried that as well. Using 1000 and 8000, It helped a lot more than shoe polish.
So I did a repost, let it sit a few hours, then wiped the excess off. It left the finish pretty nice, and even.

[Butch Harlow]

I guess Jeff kinda answered what was going to be my question. That the 122 shell is the same hard rubber compound as the 144. I polished a completely chalky brown 144 earlier this year. As I sanded and polished, it went through stages where it had an awesome looking kind of antique brassy look. I almost left it that way, but kept going until the shell was absolute black pearl ebony. The cap still has some of the brassy look in it, but it was near impossible to remove all of it due to the shape and that my hands were sore. I gotta say that the smell was the worst thing I ever encountered.

Great work on the 122, the price of the two combined is far below retail and the effort put in always makes one feel good about it. Saving history for the future generations! Love it.

[Dan/Panther]

Great work on both parts.

D/P