No!!! Not ANOTHER PINK mushroom phone!?!?!

[Jester]

Some of you may remember this auction.  I managed, finally , to pick up a soft plastic 500 U in this lot of six phones.  It was the only noteworthy find in the lot and, wouldn't you know it--it's pink!.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad I found it--I needed a nice pink 500!  But I've noticed this is the most easily found color for mushroom phones.  I would like to have one in light gray, or mediterranean blue, but that will have to wait.  In the mean time, here is my pink 500U from 11/12-58.

[Kenny C]

is that one of dans caps?

It looks grand. I want a U but I just have a P

[Jester]

Kenny, this cap was machined out of white nylon & had to be painted to match the body.  It was the most time consuming part of this project.  Has anyone noticed that rose pink seems to be my "flavor of the month"?

[Kenny C]

I  bet it was. Congratulaitons  I may be getting one in the future but for now I have a soft plastic light gray to work on.

[jsowers]

Stephen, tell us more. Like what you did to paint the mushroom cap. I have a white nylon one too that I have to paint pink, and would like to know, especially where you got the paint. I have a friend who got paint color matched at Lowe's and was thinking of going that route. But spray painting has worked better for me in the past on an aqua blue mushroom. So inquiring minds want to know!

Also you must've dyed and reformed that handset cord. It looks great. The plastics look great too, and I bet they were easy compared to all the other parts. You were lucky there to have one made of all soft plastic, so you didn't have the light and dark thing going on like the ones from 1959.

Was the number card on the phone lurking underneath? The auction picture shows a stick-on card, so that's always what I hope for, and that it was stuck onto the outside, to the acetate disk, and not the paper card inside.

You did a great job bringing that phone back to life.

[Dennis Markham]

The phone looks very nice, Stephen.  You did a great job of bringing that one back to life again.

Good questions, Jonathan.  Stephen, did you make the cap or have it made?

[HarrySmith]

Nice work Stephen
What did you use to power the light

[Jester]

This cap was from another project and I didn't make it.  It is well made, but nylon does not paint easily, so I probably would have picked another material if I were to try to make one. My method for painting this cap was time consuming and I will do it differently next time.  I could not find a shelf mixed color that matched the plastics on this phone, so I bought a can of Krylon "ballet slipper" and shot a small amount into the lid so I could brush it onto the cap.  The color is way too light, so I shot some Krylon dark red into the mix a little at a time until I had a color match.  Nylon does not accept paint without a good primer coat, so make sure you do that before proceeding.  I also made the mistake of not priming the inside of the bulb enclosure--big mistake since nylon is opaque & will let light illuminate any thin spots in the paint.  I fixed this with applying more topcoats & inserting a 1 inch square piece of aluminum foil inside the cap opening.  This acts as both a sheild for the cap & a reflector to send more light out the opening in the cap.  Jonathan, I hadn't thought of the custom mixed spray can, or I would have used it.

Harry, the 2012A transformer & connecting block that I used to power the light circuit are pictured below.  I've found many of these old transformers at flea markets over the years, but I imagine there are fewer of them now than there used to be.

[jsowers]

Thanks for the how-to.

My mushroom cap came from John LaRose a few years ago and it sounds a bit like yours. It was white translucent plastic or nylon or something very slick. I sanded it first with fairly coarse sandpaper, and then spray painted it aqua blue. Before I did the sanding, the paint would just bead up. I had to mask off the white area underneath where the lamp reflected, and the brass bayonet mount. It took several coats before it was opaque enough so light didn't shine through.

I like your idea about the aluminum foil. Wouldn't want to melt the mushroom!

I looked for pictures I remember taking of the painting I did, but can't find them.

Lowe's will computer color match and make a small sample can of paint for suprisingly little money. I think it was around $6.

[Jester]

Was the number card on the phone lurking underneath? The auction picture shows a stick-on card, so that's always what I hope for, and that it was stuck onto the outside, to the acetate disk, and not the paper card inside.

I meant to comment on this earlier.  You were right, Jonathan-- I got this one with a stick-on card fastened to the acetate disk, and there were two older cards under the disk.  All three were related.  The stick-on reads: area 518  482-5320.  The one just underneath that reads: IVanhoe 2-5320.  The one underneath that is the one I left in the fingerwheel & you can read it below.  Besides being a five digit exchange assigned to Albany, I'll also point out the two slits in the card that were used to slide four pre-printed number strips into the card to make the four digit house number.  I have only seen pictures of this style card before, so I was happy to get it.

[Dennis Markham]

That's cool, Stephen, TWO hidden cards.  So somewhere along the line they switched the exchange from IVanhoe to Albany.  I wonder how often that occurred?   I have seen those cards with the sliding numbers before but they were always on a much later card, with an area code and not an exchange name.

[Dan]

Nice find, and your cord dyeing skills are excellent

[AE_Collector]

So somewhere along the line they switched the exchange from IVanhoe to Albany.  I wonder how often that occurred?  

There are probably many different potential scenarios here. One would be that the subscriber moved to a different exchange area and was able to get a very similar number in the new exchange. Of course this would also mean that they moved the phone with them which back then wasn't a common occurence but could have happened.

A more probable scenrio would be what we called a "Grid Cut". Exchanges frequently covered a large geographic area in the early days. As areas grew in telephone density, quite often the decision was made to split the area in two by building a new CO to cover half of the existing subscribers. New exchanges and equipment were needed due to growth anyway so sometimes it made sense to put the new equipment into a new building a distance from the existing building which on average reduced the length of the cable from each phone to the exchange.

This meant that many of the existing subscribers had their number changed.  Since all numbers were available in the brand new exchange, the subscriber was usually able to keep the last digits of his number so just the exchange name or first two or three digits of his phone number had to be changed.

Terry

[finlover]

I have a white nylon one too that I have to paint pink, and would like to know, especially where you got the paint.

Tamiya spray paint, TS-25 Pink, is a good match for Rose Pink and is especially made for plastics.  You can find it at better hobby stores.  It blows the old Testors stuff out of the water.

[Kenny C]

ok this is what we need for bakelite. I hate polishing and it never looks as good as the rest of the phone.