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A few months ago, I mentioned to my fiancee that I thought it would be cool to have an old-style rotary phone for the house. We looked at some of the new old-style phones in places like Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel, but they were all very cheaply made and were very lightweight and mostly plastic. Luckily for me, my fiancee mentioned this to my mother. When I went home over Christmas, my mom pulled an old 1000 Series Kellogg phone from the attic. Now this phone was manufactured somewhere between 1946 and 1955,1 so the internal wiring was not compatible with current US phone lines. But aside from the wiring, the phone seemed to be in fairly good condition so I took it home and made it my next project.

The first task at hand was to disassemble the phone. The nice thing about old hardware is that it was meant to be opened up and worked on. If you were to try to disassemble your cell phone, chances are that you would break it. But this phone gave me no trouble whatsoever. Once I took everything apart and laid it out on a table (see Figure 2), I assessed the damage. The most significant damage was on the cord at the base of the handset. Over the years the casing had just worn out so I wrapped some electrical tape around it to prevent any further damage.

The only other noticeable damage was the casing around the individual wires in the phone cords. They had become brittle over time and pieces would flake off as I moved them. Aside from some dirt and dust, I couldn't find any other issues.

Before I continue, let me identify some of the major pieces of the phone. First is the phone base (see Figure 3) which houses the phone's circuitry and the phone's ringer. The wires on top left run to the wall and the wires on the bottom left run to the handset. Just above the wires going to the handset are the ports for the wires that run to the dial assembly.

Second is the phone's analog dial assembly (see Figures 4 and 5). This piece is particularly interesting because it's all mechanical.

Third you have the hang-up mechanism (see Figure 6). Note the red color. Apparently these phones were commonly called "Red Bar" phones.

Lastly is the handset which is made up of a mouthpiece and an earpiece (see Figures 7 through 11).

So at this point all I had was an old disassembled phone. Since I had no clue how the wiring in this thing worked, I was pretty much going to be forced to guess my way to victory. But before I started guessing, I decided to give the Internet a chance. Sure enough, I was able to find a wire diagram for this phone (see Figure 12). This is just further proof that anything you need is on the net. The diagram I found was a scanned in copy of the original and ended up making the rewiring process much easier.

At this point, the biggest problem was figuring out how to wire the phone into a modern phone jack. The old system used a transmit, receive, and ground three-wire system. Today's phones use just a transmit and receive. After reading up on the electrical standards that dictate how modern phone systems work, it became apparent that I could simply bridge the grounding post in the phone to the receive post and the phone should work.

With my plan in mind, I took a trip to Wal-mart and bought a small piece of hardware that is intended to connect two standard phone wires together to create a longer wire. Once I got home, I broke it in half and pulled out the wires I wouldn't be needing. Figure 13 shows the other half of the connecter that wasn't used. The half that was used is exactly identical with the exception of the wire colors.

All I had to do was connect the transmit (red) and receive (green) wires to the posts that the old wires connected to. Then, I pulled the white wire out and used it as a bridge to the receive post from the ground post. I now had the wires connected to the phone with a standard RJ11 port on the other end (see Figure 14). The port is under the electrical tape in the picture.

With the RJ11 port inside, I could simply plug in any standard phone cable. I bought a black one to match the phone, plugged it in and presto! It worked! (See Figure 15.)

Now all I had left to do was to clean the phone up and paint it. All I did for the paint job was buy some super fine sand paper to work out the dings and then painted it with a low gloss black spray paint (see Figure 16). The whole painting process was quite simple and the phone took the paint very well.

The painted and reassembled telephone turned out quite nice (see Figure 17). The only issues are that the ringer doesn't strike the bells as hard as it probably once did. I've not narrowed this down, but I'm guessing that one of the electrical components in the system is aging and not functioning as well as it once did. Its not that big of a deal, so I may never spend the time or effort to resolve the issue. I would like to find some cloth cable like the original cable that connected the telephone base to the handset. As I mentioned above, there was a tear in the cable and I had to use electrical tape to patch it. Again, this isn't a major issue so repairing it may not happen.

And if you were wondering how much a phone like this goes for, I've seen them listed for as low as $100, refurbished with newer parts, and as much as $400 refurbished with parts resembling the originals. I'd say mine is somewhere between right now. I don't plan to sell it, but it's fun knowing what it's worth.

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