Yellow Soft Plastic Sepetember 1959 Western Electric Restoration

[allnumbedup]

I got around to fixing up this yellow 500 I bought on ebay about a year ago for myself that I got for $54 delivered.  It is for my daughter who requested one that was "soft plastic" and "preferably date matched" and "working". (She has been hanging around me too much!). I am posting because it was an interesting restoration. It is a late soft plastic phone that had a combination of inprinted marks on the handset but stamped marks on the body (third and fourth photos). It is dated matched except the handset elements from 5 and 6/1957. Maybe left over stock? The plastic was a challenge because there were imperfections like the one seen on the finished dial face which required sanding (last photo). The looked just like cracks but are inclusions. I had to use 120 grit to remove them which I would say is unusual. I left the one on the dial because I was pretty sure I would need to go deep enough to ruin the injected molded numbers/letters.  The browned cord responded to bleaching by getting too pale so I wound up re-dying it with Yellow analine dye in MEK.  I made the dial card based off a real and a bit unusual one with big font sent by a customer for his phone. I used the date and a named yellow color by Western Electric for my daughter's new phone.

[SUnset2]

That's a very nice looking restoration.  I really like the look of the soft plastic yellow.  It definitely has a different look to it compared with the ABS yellow.

[allnumbedup]

Before photo from ebay

[MMikeJBenN27]

Looks great!

[Kellogg Kitt]

That is a beautiful telephone and a nice job on cleanup/restoration.  Yellow has always been one of favorite telephone colors.

What is that drippy looking stuff on the dial in the "before" picture?  I once saw a phone on eBay with something similar, and I was scared to buy it without knowing what is was.

[TelePlay]

I left the one on the dial because I was pretty sure I would need to go deep enough to ruin the injected molded numbers/letters.

Good call. I ruined one number plate by over sanding. One can do a bit of surface sanding on plastic injected number plates to remove normal depth natural plastic discoloration but that's it. Deep sanding to get rid of deep scratches never works, does not end well.

Nice work on the restoration.

[allnumbedup]

Drippy stuff: I messaged and asked before I bought it .  It was Windex and the seller sent me a picture with it gone.. Good eye on that, I forgot about it. 
On sanding:  Not my original insight, rather I remember a post here that showed ruined letter/numbers on a sanded dial face-----------maybe yours?
Soft Yellow: I agree with the soft plastic looking different that the ABS.  You get a sense of a little bit of transluusence and more depth, maybe especially in the light soft plastic colors.  I think you can see it in the closeup shot of the dial face.

[TelePlay]

On sanding:  Not my original insight, rather I remember a post here that showed ruined letter/numbers on a sanded dial face-----------maybe yours?

Was me probably but not my phone. It was a pink 554 where the owner tried to remove discoloration with peroxide but didn't follow the procedure and ended up with some very deep white areas on all the plastic. When I tried to sand the white off of the bezel, I discovered the "perfect" number layer was not as deep as the white plastic and ended up sanding into the deeper, distorted numbers.

Since then, I heard from others who also ruined one bezel by over sanding and learned never to sand that deep again.



https://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=28611.msg273309#msg273309

[allnumbedup]

My daughter collects mid-century modern and bought an x-link for her yellow phone. I added a junction box the the end of the phone's yellow spaded cord, then a black modular cord to this box so all the wires are behind furniture and the xlink is over by her WiFi cable box. I think us collectors might sometimes underestimate how much it seems like magic connecting a cell phone to a rotary phone. She got sick of answering "my dad says it will" when her friends ask "does it work, though?"