Denken phone has a partner but....

[mienaichizu]

...it is missing its transmitter and transmitter cap. Some parts of the handset chord and one of the plungers were eaten away by rats. Very dirty but no dings nor cracks. I have not yet tested it if it still works. Anyway just got it for only about $7.00

[McHeath]

Niiicceee phone!  Very cool style, dare I say it, Art Deco.

And ohmigawd it was aqua blue!  I can tell you a little about getting the aqua blue back from that greenish brownish color it currently is. First you sand off your fingerprints sanding the phone for what feels like days.  Then you pour pure acetone on your fingers to eat off whatever skin the sanding left and you do this for several days.  Then you buy a new shell, handset shell, and cord to replace the ones you spent 400 hours sanding and chemical peeling.  Then you wonder at your sanity in this "hobby" that suddenly has you hunched over a sink for a whole day sanding and chemical peeling an old phone that most people would throw away.
 

[mienaichizu]

yes McHeath, I can definitely say that this is "Art Deco" and it is aqua blue. I already tested it nah its not working. This one has a ringer and I'm planning to place it on my other Denken phone.

I've seen another one of these being sold but its too expensive. It has a dial on it and its mint green.

[McHeath]

It might not work because it's missing it's transmitter.  Seems that, if I recall correctly, some of the older 500s won't work without a transmitter as well. 

[Ellen]

Another aerodynamic little roadster.  I like it a lot, with the black button for ... ? 

There is another school of thought in the world of old objects and antiques.  This is preservation, rather than renovation.  "Preserve" keeps the object from further deterioration but also maintains the scars and badges of the historical reality of the object.  Our phones were tools in peoples' houses and businesses, used every day.  They were treasured for the function they performed, and sometimes for their artistic (or kitschy) merits. 

Renovation makes something "like new" again.  It scrubs away all the history, except for the design. 

I see that some of our group like a phone to have matching dates throughout, while others are willing to accept a 1956 phone in a 1972 case.  Some like a phone to shine as if it were right out of the box this morning.

Personally, if I had mienaichizu's cool phone, I would get the crunchy-looking scum off the surface and leave it at that.  If it can be made to work, I would find transmitter and cap that fit, not necessarily the same color.  The original aqua color is very cool, but as McHeath knows, you can have pristine color or you can have pristine shape.  His aqua phone lost a lot of it's shape in his renovation project.  So did his fingers.

[McHeath]

Yeah, the fingers have just now recovered.

[mienaichizu]

I don't know if this would still works and finding the right transmitter and cap for it is very hard, since this is kinda "rare" here in the Philippines. The black button? i don't know what its use for. It looks like this has been used as a intercom.

[HobieSport]

Personally I tend to agree with Ellen.  I would just clean it well but leave the old patina.  It really has charm and shows the history.  It really is a great looking phone, Ramil.  Now I gotta get me a Denken someday, but one with a dial.  I saw a couple of German phones on Ebay last week, but they had reversed dials, which would make them rather mind boggling to use, with 9 equaling 1, 8 equalling 2 etc..

[McHeath]

I have a few phones I've left as found, my signal corp 500 and an old Stromberg come to mind, but otherwise I'm one of those clean it up till it shines like new nutts.  Probably way too much of my mom in me, you can eat off her garage floor, not to mention the inside of the house which is so clean it hurts.  Dirt fears to show up near her perimeter, and I've certainly taken after that model to the point that I scrub stuff to death. 

Funny mom story:

Once in college a buddy came and stayed the weekend with us.  He went to shower and left his bedroom door open and his clothes laying on the bed.  She of course saw the clothes when walking by and grabbed them and washed them, so he gets out of the shower and comes wandering out in a towel asking if I've played some prank on him.  "Nah, that's just my mom doing her thing and cleaning everything on Earth."  The clothes were returned shortly, ironed and pressed of course.