I know nothing....

[manybagolike]

I don't know the first thing about electronics but I have an old rotary phone and I wanted to modify it. I thought it would be a cool little project for myself. I don't need it to function. I just wanted it to be lighter in wieght and maybe get it to ring so my daughter can play with it. I'm going to check out our library system to see if they have anything of use.

Can anyone tell me if this is possbile and maybe help me?

[Dan/Panther]

First of all welcome to our hangout.
If you want to make the phone a toy for the kids, may I first suggest you post photos, so we can determine the collectable interest in the phone. You may have something that someone, would be willing to trade, or buy from you for their collection, and in turn set one up the way you want it.
JMHO.

D/P

It would be a shame to have you gut the phone, and then post photos of a 1949-500.

[McHeath]

Welcome.  I agree with my esteemed colleague D/P, first do check that it's not a critically rare rotary phone worth a godawful amount of money before you tinker too much. 

Making it ring is possible, and I'm sure someone here can set up with instructions, but that's not my area of "expertise".  (which is more of "look at the cool phone!")

[HobieSport]

Yes, please let the forum know what phone you have first.  And as far as making it into a "toy", I'm not sure why you would want to make it weigh less, but I always thought that a rotary phone would make an excellent educational item for a child to have, and as the child grows older, something they could tinker with and maybe even get working, under adult supervision of course. Don't play with the insides when it's plugged in to avoid shock of course.

Also I'd at least give it a good cleaning and disinfecting as "you never know where it's been".

Just my thoughts.

[bingster]

If I'm not mistaken it takes 90 volts to ring the ringer, an any arrangement of batteries or electricity would carry a significant danger of shock.  There may be a safe way to do what you want to do, but I can't think of one at the moment.

[HobieSport]

Maybe really not a good idea as a toy, unless you just want the dial and handset to play with, but no electrical power (real danger of shock) so it wouldn't ring.  I'd really think a lot about real safety here. How old is your child? Sharp parts? Parts that can be ingested and choked on? Toxic parts? Seriously.

That being said, I would have loved to see the inner workings of a functioning phone when I was 5 or 6 years old, under adult supervision, but like most, our phone was owned by the phone company and thus off limits to our healthy childhood curiosity. And I think my early education in electronics and precision mechanics was perhaps stunted a bit by that, and I'm still playing catch up...