Estate sale find- Rose beige under a tan top coat ?

[Rigger1]

Its been a while since I posted here. I found an interesting phone at an estate sale last week. Dated 1956 and 1957 inside. I took some quick pictures. It appears the phone was painted over with a tan color. Nice job who ever did it. Does the color underneath look to be Rose Beige? Was it common to repaint phones? Any thoughts or information would be appreciated.  Thank,  Bill

[LarryInMichigan]

That does appear to be rose beige under the paint.  Are the handset caps also rose beige inside?  It was quite common for phones to be painted.  This morning, at an estate sale, I bought a light beige soft plastic WE 500 with a white soft plastic handset painted beige.

Larry

[Rigger1]

Hello. The caps are also painted and darker ( rose beige ) inside.  Boy, would I like to get that paint off.

[poplar1]

"7C-55" stamp on the dial indicates that the dial was originally rose beige (color code-55). Of course, Western Electric had to install a new light beige (-60)dial number plate as well as light beige cords on the painted phone.

Although any color parts could have been repainted another color -- as the handset Larry just found -- your appears to be one of many "manufacture discontinued" new color sets that were "updated" as follows:

Oxford gray (-52) > Light gray (-61)
Mediterranean Blue (-57) > Aqua Blue (-62)
Rose Beige (-55) > Lt. Beige (-60)

Not sure what happened to the new Mahogany Brown (-54) sets that were left over in 1957, when the new colors were introduced.

[AL_as_needed]

That can be a bit of work to bring back to the original color, but worth it. I got a painted beige set that was sadly the same boring beige under the paint.... Not an awesome find

[TelePlay]

That can be a bit of work to bring back to the original color, but worth it. I got a painted beige set that was sadly the same boring beige under the paint.... Not an awesome find

Others can comment on this but I think that happened a lot, painting the same color to restore a housing. I've had a few repainted in the same color. Probably cheaper and easier to turn around a scratched, returned phone housing to a new rental customer than make a new housing. The one I had also had a chipped out spot probably due to an surface defect that affected the paint.

Polane is hard to remove, if that's what was used.

[RotarDad]

We need WEBellSystemChristian to comment here.  He probably has to most direct experience using non-sanding methods to remove the paint.....  Christian?

[unbeldi]

Polane is hard to remove, if that's what was used.

Polane did not exist until the 1970s.

[TelePlay]

Polane did not exist until the 1970s.

Good to know. What type of paint did they use before Polane?

[WEBellSystemChristian]

Wow, I didn't see this topic until now!

Unfortunately, this is the armor plating-type paint that every 500 collector dreads finding. Polane didn't exist yet, but refurb shops used some sort of epoxy-type paint that was incredibly resistant to chemicals, chipping, abrasion, etc.

I have tried using Denatured Alcohol to remove it, to no avail. Acetone does turn very thin exposed layers to liquid after several minutes of exposure, but any underlying Tenite showing through chips in the paint will vaporize rapidly. What you're left with is the Tenite full of tiny craters where the Acetone seeped though the hole in the paint and started eating the plastic--it's more difficult to remove or blend those craters than it is to just sand the paint off. The paint is actually far more resistant to chemicals than the Tenite underneath. As long as the plastic is made of Tenite, there's no way to dissolve the paint off.

There is a product I used for my first painted phone project, and that was LA's Totally Awesome from Dollar Tree. It's a cleaning agent, and after several days of painted plastic soaking in this stuff, the liquid will actually get in between the paint and plastic, pretty much causing a very small amount of paint to lose adhesion around areas of exposed plastic (existing chips, wear spots, etc). You can then chip off paint around a spot of exposed plastic, let it soak for a few days more, chip off more paint, and repeat. This takes a LONG time, but it's less labor intensive than sanding.

My method lately has been to sand all of the paint off except for the hard-to-reach spots, and then soak in Totally Awesome to remove paint left in the badges and impossible-to-sand areas.

Great phone otherwise! It should look great once the paint is gone!