ebay...Grey Soft Plastic?

[John S]

Hi everybody...

I juts picked this phone up on eBay.  It cost me 4.99, plus 12 shipping.  I think its a grey soft plastic phone?  I took some pics.  The sad thing is that they made a special adjustment to it.  Here are the pics....  any reason why they would do that? Overall a nice phone.....

John 

[jsowers]

Ouch! That's called a Jones Plug in the electronics industry. Sometimes Cinch-Jones. Either the owner wanted a big honkin' quick disconnect on his handset or maybe the cord got cut and he wanted to re-use the original cord? You could jokingly call it "early modular."

I got a yellow soft plastic 554 once. The seller never showed the top of the phone. There was this huge toggle switch sticking out of the top, and the plastic had been cut to accept it. So I've had surprises like this too.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but with the date being after June, 1959, this isn't likely soft plastic. Parts of the phone could be soft plastic, though. I don't see any fade, so you're lucky the plastics match. You may have a bonus card under that stick-on number card. Light gray is a fairly rare color, so you still got a rare phone for not much money.

You could try to restore it by putting all the plug and socket stuff inside the phone and filling the holes as best you can. You could attach a strain relief to the handset cord past the plug and it would look more like normal.

[allineedislove]

Ouch! That's called a Jones Plug in the electronics industry. Sometimes Cinch-Jones. Either the owner wanted a big honkin' quick disconnect on his handset or maybe the cord got cut and he wanted to re-use the original cord? You could jokingly call it "early modular."

I got a yellow soft plastic 554 once. The seller never showed the top of the phone. There was this huge toggle switch sticking out of the top, and the plastic had been cut to accept it. So I've had surprises like this too.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but with the date being after June, 1959, this isn't likely soft plastic. Parts of the phone could be soft plastic, though. I don't see any fade, so you're lucky the plastics match. You may have a bonus card under that stick-on number card. Light gray is a fairly rare color, so you still got a rare phone for not much money.

You could try to restore it by putting all the plug and socket stuff inside the phone and filling the holes as best you can. You could attach a strain relief to the handset cord past the plug and it would look more like normal.

Ok, What was the date that the soft plastic stopped to be used?. Regards

[Kenny C]

I think it was mid-June 1959. I had a gray soft plastic from 6-5-59 and it was all soft plastic.

[GG]

For repairing an area that large, I would suggest using PC-7, which is a stiff epoxy that's a dark gray. 

First you'll need some kind of stiff backing, for which I'd suggest model-maker's styrene plastic cut to a square that's larger than the entire area covered by the damage.  Super-glue the styrene square to the inside of the housing.  Then apply the PC-7 from the front, in one layer that's a little higher than the surrounding area. 

Then after the PC-7 hardens, sand it down to a flush surface.  Then prepare a matching paint using model-maker's paints that are available in small jars for about $1/jar: use black, gray, and white, adjusting the mixture until you get as close a match as possible under different lighting conditions.  Apply with a bristle brush or foam brush.  Let it dry completely, then repeat for a couple of coats.

With all that, it may still be necessary to paint the entire phone, which would have to be a spray job.  I recall reading somewhere around here that Polane was the brand the Bell used, and it or something like it may still be available.  Allow the paint to dry to completely hard, in a warm dry environment. 

If you can get that to come out "invisible" it will be an excellent repair job.  Difficult but not impossible. 

Sheesh, the ways people find to torture perfectly good phones...  I hear those gray ones were often used in conjunction with early computer terminals, so this "modification" may have been intended to enable removing the handset so a) the transmitter didn't interfere with data transmission while enabling the phone to be left off-hook (though it should not have been left off-hook after the data terminal connected), and b) the user didn't have to listen to the squealy modem tone during their session "online."   

[Dennis Markham]

Ok, What was the date that the soft plastic stopped to be used?. Regards

Here's a post from my blog that I wrote about soft plastic a couple of years ago.  This was based upon my experiences and those of other collectors---not any published Bell System Practice.

http://tinyurl.com/4yn922u

[John S]

I do have other soft plastic phones, this one does feel a bit harder compared to my other phones.  It does not have that weird smell to it.  Its a nice phone,  to bad they did that.....I am going to try to fill the hole....over all nice phone..


Thanks everybody!!!!!!

John