Cleaning and Polishing Old Bakelite Telephones
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping

I believe the best way to clean Bakelite and plastic Telephones is as follows:

Carefully dismantle the Bakelite telephones as much as possible. Then

Clean the Bakelite with a good non abrasive chrome cleaner such as autochrome.

Working the cleaner into the telephone in a circular motion.

The next stage and most important stage is to use "paste polishing number 5" from greygate chemical products specifically designed for cleaning Bakelite telephones.

Finally finish with a good quality "carnauda" car wax (that containing no silicones)

At each stage use plenty of elbow grease and patience. For the final polish use a clean cotton duster.

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Converting a 332 Bakelite Telephone

British 332 Telephone conversion.

If you are trying to convert a British 332 bakelite telephone to work on the BT plug system please follow these instructions:

Opening the telephone by removing the base (four screws) and:

Remove all existing straps

Insert strap between T1 and T2
Insert strap between T8 and T9

Connect the white wire of the line cord to terminal T1
Connect the red wire of the line cord to terminal T9
Connect the blue (bell) wire of the line cord to terminal T11
Connect the spare green wire of the line cord to terminal T3

Insert a 3.3K resistor between terminals T11 and T12.

If there are no faults on the existing telephone this should work.

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Updating a British 300 series telephone
Category: Art and Photography

A few people have asked me how to relace the old carbon granule microphones/transmitters on old 200/300 series bakelite telephones with the more modern 21a type, so I have included instructions below to do this.

Step 1) Remove the base plate of the telephone

Step 2) Inside the telephone check that the 3 wire cord is correctly installed (white from T4, Red from T5 and green on T6)

Step 3) Remove the mouthpiece cover by carefully inserting a thin prong into the hole and carefully twisting the mouthpiece anticlockwise.

Step 4) Lift out the old carbon granule microphone/transmitter.

Step 5) Unscrew and remove the spring contacts.

Step 6) Connect the new 21a microphone (transmitter) to the new cord Red and the White wires.

Step 7) Connect the Green wire as original then place a strap wire link to the red wire on the new transmitter to the original screw that held the red wire.

Step 8) Use some form of soft packing behind the new (smaller) microphone to prevent rattling.

Step 9) Replace the mouthpiece gently (as this can be easily damaged)

Good luck

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Converting Bakelite Telephones
Current mood: content
Category: Art and Photography

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Old Phones
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Art and Photography

Still getting the hang of this but I have been looking at my friends new website today all about Rockingham Pottery. He is using the same website provider as my British Antique Telephone site. Many thanks to Jim, he has helped me a lot. He has also started a forum about Rockingham Pottery that should be more interesting as time goes on. Jim is also helping me with my other sites about old telephones and old phones. . Early days but I am getting better with his help.

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Second Blog
Current mood: curious
Category: Friends

This is my second blog and a friend has asked me to put in a link to his blog on Retro Antiques. So I hope this works.

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My first Blog

This is my first blog I am trying to get to grips with this whole thing. I am also trying to create a website for my hobby which is collecting British antique telephones (hence the picture) and Rockingham pottery. I have started the website at Antique Telephones at Abdyantiques 

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