Classic Rotary Phones Forum

Please post your May finds of the month.

Don't forget to vote for the April Find.
The poll should be up shortly.
Jim S.

New here and thought I would share what I just inherited.

I believe it is a 1920's phone. It was my Grandmothers and my Dad just passed it down to me. I'm hoping to find a few items I need for it through this board and Google.

The crank mechanism works but the bells sound a little muffled. I would like a new mouth piece as you can see it is chipped. I need a cord as it does not have one on the ear piece. Numbers stamped into it. Not sure what they mean. Letters stamped into the inside body right above the top hinge. Inside a little dirty, so will have to learn how to clean properly. The schematics are torn and would like to replace them. The tag shows when it was refurbished and by who.

Currently looking to get a late 1950's to early 1960's rotary wall phone to refurb. We would like to hang it in the kitchen for daily use.

Greetings dialers!

I've recently been bitten by a phone bug. I found an old SC 1543 at a local antiques place for 20 dollars. It was filthy and had the word "test" painted on front and both sides. It had lots of wires, many disconnected and a few broken.

It had a 4-wire handset, which was different from any of the wiring diagrams I found for the 1543. The ringer looks like an AE ringer.

I found a wiring diagram for it, and wired accordingly, but no dial tone, and only faint line noise. I took my multimeter to the coil/capacitor assembly only to discover it did not match the schematic I had. I then did a Google search for the part number and found an entirely different wiring diagram marked 1543W.

I wired it according to that and it works, except for the dial, which sticks on return. I plan to dissemble the dial and clean it once I get the guts to take it apart. I understand they can be a pain to reassemble.

I used a few capacitors in my junk box to put in line with the ringer, and it sounds marvelous.

The paint came off with some very fine sandpaper, and I polished the whole thing with Meguiar's PlastX (from the auto department at Walmart). It has a few small cracks, and plenty of dings, but it's a nice addition to the old gossip bench my wife recently bought.

I also added a homemade dial card, and cut a plastic cover for it from some clear plastic packaging material.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2799/5704836869_4bccbf318c.jpg)

here's and earlier shot:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5221/5671090541_33dbb4fcc6.jpg)

Very nice job, and welcome to the forum.  be warned, however that this is the beginning of an addiction!

:)

Thanks... I'm afraid I saw several more even older rotary phones at the antique store. I'm very tempted.

Oh yes, the antique store.  Very evil places, you know, they contribute to the "fever".

Nice Job! Welcome to the forum, stop now before "phonitis" sets in. They tend to multiply quickly and there is no known cure ;D

Welcome to the forum - nice job with the SC 1543! A word of warning -  this time last year I had 1 phone. I now have 21......  ;)

Much nicer now, possibly somebody has a SC handset for it to replace the AE one.
Robby

Thanks for the handset ID. I was pretty sure it wasn't a perfect match for the phone.

Those are some big feet on that SC 1543!  Could it have been a prototype since it had "Test" stenciled on it? 

I had a SC 1243 (I think?) for my only phone back in the late 70's and I loved the sound of the ringer gongs.  The gongs on the WE 302's of similar vintage sound crude in comparison.

I don't think it was a prototype. I have a feeling it was a phone company phone used for testing. The ringer is marked Automatic Electric, and the handset is AE too, so I'm thinking it's something that was pieced together just for testing purposes. The coil/capacitor unit is marked 4-62.

This one is a very pleasant sounding ringer. The gongs have offset mounting holes, I'm assuming so you can turn them closer or farther from the striker to adjust the sound.

After all the reading I've done here, it's not exactly the "find" I thought it was, but I'm still excited to have found it. Recently I cleaned the dial with contact cleaner, and oiled it with whatever I had on-hand (saxophone key oil). The dial now works, and I've made some calls to verify that.

I'm back!

What's up with only two "Finds of the Month" for May? Glad to see that I didn't miss out on many "Phone Finds" while I was gone! Of course I didn't bring any "Finds" back from Europe with me either.

So how about we take jsowers advice and add JimH's 1958 white 500 "Find" in here too since he bought it on ebay in mid May (for $8.98 plus shipping by the way).

Here's the discussion thread:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=4899.msg61844;topicseen#new

I can't seem to post the before and after pics directly into the thread. Dennis is this another glitch on my side? Have you seen this message before when trying to upload a picture? It let me post this message but if I attached a picture OR went back to add a picture this is the message I get:

An Error Has Occurred!
The upload folder is full. Please try a smaller file and/or contact an administrator.

Got a little behind with declaring a winner here!

Looks like JimH won this month by a tiny margin  ;D

Congrats on your find Jim!!

Terry

Thanks!  That's part of the fun, isn't it?  Finding something valuable to you for cheap?  I don't know about you guys....but as soon as it's over and cleaned up, I'm on the hunt for the "next one"!  I almost forgot about it unless I go look at the shelf it's on.  How many of you go through your phones and say "Oh yeah....I forgot about that one".