Resin Repair - Ivory GPO 232

[FABphones]

This repair project is on the Ivory 232, which a former owner broke then stuck together using a copious amount of Superglue.

Link to the Superglue removal project:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?&topic=22559

Curiosity has again gotten the better of me so I am wondering how well I can repair this damaged body shell. First I used Acetone on a Wypall cloth to remove all of the smeared Superglue from the exterior. That worked a treat.

As the existing repair is a little out of alignment - one side of the break being reattached higher than the part it is adhered to, I decided I would take all of the individual broken pieces apart, clean, and reattach.

No chance.

After quite some time spent with Acetone and a craft (exacto) knife the sections were no nearer to separating than they were when I started. I was running out of time for today and decided nothing short of placing it for a while in a sealed Acetone soak would help with this part of the project. For no particular reason I don't want to try that experiment right now so... rethink...

Ok, if the bond is that (to my surprise) good, albeit a tad untidy and very dirty, then I won't fight it, I will work with it. So I have spent the rest of this afternoon scraping the grimy glue out of the repair using a sharp blade on the craft knife, and enlarging the grooved join between the two parts.

There is a very small piece missing from the side. The grime in this gap took a bit of careful digging to get at and remove without causing too much issue to the surrounding area. I always work with a table magnifying glass on this type of project. A good glass helps to see the unseeable (photo below).

I also used the craft knife to even up the joined height differences a little better. A nice sharp blade and this material crumbles and flakes away beautifully. I can't use those shavings to infill the small gap as they are mostly contaminated, so for that I will very probably be filing a donation from the inner.

Next session will be taking those filings, mixing up the resin and getting the recently acquired Vacuum Chamber up and running. Working with such small quantities of resin is probably the trickiest part of this project. Without a Vacuum Chamber I think this repair would mostly be filled with micro bubbles.

More to follow, meantime, before and after photos of progress so far:

Photo 1 and 2 - before and after cleaning out the glued sides.

Photo 3 - the small area where a piece is missing after cleaning, taken in close up. I then zoomed in using 'Paint' software to see the finer detail and make sure the area really was clean.

[HarrySmith]

Looks pretty good. The acetone wipe seems to have smoothed it out pretty well. I think after filling in the hole & the other low areas you should be able to sand or wipe it smooth. Thanks for sharing this and all your other repair processes with us. I, for one, have picked up some good tips from your work and I am sure lots of others have as well.

[RB]

Great progress!
I am impressed...

[Dan/Panther]

You can scrape some donor plastic from inside the phones shell, then place some in the hole and add a drop of acetone. this will melt the plastic and you will have a repair that is the exact color of the item you are doing. Then sand smooth and [polish. It will be nearly undetectable.

D/P

[twocvbloke]

This phone is made with Urea Formaldehyde, which is similar to bakelite and doesn't melt with acetone (otherwise the removal of the superglue would have melted it already!)...

[andy1702]

I agree with twocvbloke. As far as I'm aware acetone only melts ABS and ABS wasn't around when they were making 232s. Diakon did exist and was often used for the green or red ones. However diakon is similar to perspex and again acetone doesn't touch it.