Antique Crank Phone Hack

I have a friend that owns Antique Alley an antique shop on Oahu in Hawai'i.
One day Pak'e sold an old crank telephone, you know da kine, you crank to summon the operator named Sara to ask her to connect you to Sheriff Andy, to a nice old lady that probably remembers Using one.
After the sale the lady stayed a while to talk story with Pak'e, the owner of the store.
It came to pass, during the conversation, that she wanted to use the phone as an extention to her existing phone line.
She did not care if she could use it to call out.
The Pak'e said he knew of a guy that could do the job.......


Enter drbill.

Step 1 Basic Materials:

1 Antique Handcrank Telephone
1 Modern Telephone Handset
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue Sticks
Screws
Screw Driver
Soldering Iron
Solder
Wirecutters
2 Hollow Non-Conductive Tubes

 

Comments

[electfire]

This reminds me of the old phone that my dad had reworked... inside it had a normal cordless phone that was connected in a way that allowed the old ringer to still ring when a call came through... seeing this makes me want to re-create it and make it better.... now only to find an old phone, or at least some old phone parts and some old wood....

[sctirvn687]

Could it have been hooked up as it was to be just an answer only phone?

[drbill]

Yes that was considered.

[drbill]

Look at all the goodies in the backround of the first picture. Paki's whole shop looks like that. Packed to the rafters with all the neat stuff you could ever want.

Oh yeah. Paki also supplys some of the props to the TV show 'LOST".

cool Huh?

[drbill]

And is now a supplier of some props to 'Hawai'i Five O'.

[Divet]

How hard would it be to get the original bell to work?

[chrwei]

possibly quite hard.  The bell needs a constant and comparatively high amount of power.  you'd need an additional power source for it and some electronic trickery to detect the ring sounds from the donor phone and trigger a relay to power the hammer.  It's possible that one of those remote ringers or ringer lights that plug into a phone line could be adapted to make it go

[bassbindevil]

Not that hard.  The phone company sends a special ringing voltage of about 90 volts AC down the line, which has enough power to run more than one bell.

It should have been pretty easy to make this phone work as-is.  I'm sure there's schematics out on the 'net if not complete instructions on restoring and doing whatever mods are needed.

[funnicus]

Wow,  I had the exact same old phone and did this to it about 15 years ago.  The bell DID work on mine,   I used an at&t  store pushbutton phone that was designed for a bell ringer.   The only thing I  had to change was the microphone if I remember right.   I made mine using a board to cover everything so when you opened it all you saw was the push buttons.    Neat project,  but it will lower the actual value of an antique phone in most cases.  Cheers.

[drbill]

Lower value yes maybe. Maybe not. The lady wanted to use it. She did not want to spend a lot of money and she did not want it Destroyed as some here think I did. The phone was preserved in a way that it could be restored very easily. Only a few solder joints were required and All the parts were saved out. No holes were drilled. The original wire to the handset was saved in a bag by itself, taped shut in a second heavier bag, and marked as containing asbestos. All existing wires were left in place for possible future use. The antique parts that were removed were stored in plastic bags with desicant and placed in a separate wood box provided by the owner. The hot glue that was used to hold new wires in place can be pealed off and leaves no stain. So........

[drbill]

As this telephone hangs on the wall it is being enjoyed by the owner as an extention phone on the second floor of her home. The woman was overjoyed when it was plugged in and she was able to make calls out.
I Dare Say this telephone will be around for a long time to come because it is not being stored in a dusty damp locker somewhere forgotten. It will be loved and used for years to come.

[pfiddle]

 I bought a WWll hand-crank telephone that needed (odd-sized) batteries to make it run. I stuffed a couple of steel springs in to hold the smaller (modern) batteries in place. Violla!!. If my wife needs to speak to me in the basement she picks up the hand set winds the crank and I get to hear the bell and we communicate. No outside line necessary. We run a B&B in Ireland and the guests think it's great.
It was in fact one of the guests an old soldier that helped me rig it up.
Peter

[drbill]

I got a pair of sound powered Navy phones for that.

[NightCreature]

 oOo  i was going to do this years ago but my parents wouldn't let me touch the phones i wish i could *sad face* i think there collecting dust about now hmmmm...

[kpataska]

They are worth more now than if you f^ck them up...

Hacking an antique that works is senseless. Hook it up FIRST and see if you get a dial tone.

And if it ain't yours.... No mods for you!

[strmrnnr]

It'd be nice to see the key pad on the outside or even hidden in an easily accessible location. Maybe if a different style of handset was hacked, or even a brass frame to cover the plastic edges.

Very nice!

[rickfmdj]

I want to but a candle stick phone and try this out!  nice.

[tforthomas]

I did something like this with a candlestick phone.  The dial was broken, so I added pushbuttons on the underside of the base.  It was also a cordless handset I used so you could walk around the house with it.

[waightka]

Not a geek answer, just a SAAAD story.  Some years local teleco being merged with large telco - finds 250 brand new candlestick phones in basement.  Lucky entrepeneur buys for $2/ea.  Contracts to sell for $100/ea - week later vandals set fire to warehouse - all gone!!

[MY]

Nice.  Very nice.

[chrwei]

 cool hack..

please take this  constructively... i think the posting has too many steps for what's involved, and maybe because of that too many repetitions of pictures.  

[MrL33TPenguin]

Hey good job DrBill!!

BTW, great job getting featured :D 

[unbentcrayfish]

cool, how did you get all of the things to put it together?

[Rook Defense]

Neat instructable, but here's a fun bit of information. My uncle knows a guy who used to work for Bell here in Canada, and according to him, due to a funny bit of legislation, they still have to support unmodified crank telephones, because the law states that if such a phone is in the system they have to provide service. Maybe the idea is to stop the phone company from forcing technology upgrades on people.

[drbill]

(removed by author or community request)

[lemonie]

I must have missed that - there you go for a start.

L

[lemonie]

I'm interested - the wood doesn't look antique, the hinges look very cheap and not antique, I see no dial, the bells don't look right - is this an antique phone or a repro / hash of old &new?

L

[drbill]

OK Lemonie. The crank phone is old. It is an antique.

[lemonie]

It would it be one where you had to get the operator to dial for you? Any idea how old it it?

L

[drbill]

Yup.
Her name is Sara in the USA.

[robotguy4]

My guess?  "It it" circa 1900.
Why?

Well, first off, I'm akamai.  Second off, from my extensive knowledge of Hawai'i's trade winds, Honolulu's extensive communications history, and can converse in pidgin (er...  Actually, I'm horrible at pidgin...  I can, however, speak pigeon...  Coo! Coo!), I can deduce that--

Um...

FINE!  I just read patent date on the phone...  HAPPY?!  HAPPY?!

Yeah, you're probably not.

I think it says (under schematic, left hand, bottom corner):
"PAT'D IN USA
APR 30, 1907
[I can't read this line]"

[drbill]

I am very happy.
I did not own the phone.
I got Payed to do the hack.
I got special recognition on Instructables.
I cannot believe the number of hits it gotten.
I did it in a non-destructive way.
Last but not least all the original parts were saved out in case it wanted to be restored.

Yeah. I am Da Kine Happy. lol

[kpataska]

If you didn't use alligator clips to make your connections, you ruined the phone.

I have restored about a dozen Kellogg and such crank phones. There is special cotton-covered wire to use, correct color wire to use, etc. Anything else simply diminishes the worth of the phone.

And there are PLENTY of NOS and OEM parts available for all of these phones...

Hacking something that is near worthless is one thing. Destroying something of worth is something else...

[Leper]

That was smart of you to save the original parts. Often you can just wire an old phone right up to your phone line and it will work fine, as the point-of-use interface has been kept backwards compatible for 100+ years. It should even ring!

You can even dial on a phone without a dial/keypad by toggling the switchhook; this is how rotary phones work. So to dial 411 you go bang-bang-bang-bang (wait) bang (wait) bang (wait). 0 is 10 bangs.

Ring voltage is now generated by the telephone company rather than your hand-crank dynamo. I'm not sure what would happen if you generate the 90V on your end but the system can certainly handle it.

[robotguy4]

Is it possible to scan the paper that was included with the phone?  That would be neat!

Most companies don't include schematics with their products now days...  Too bad...  (imagine what buying a computer would be like!)

[drbill]

I will go back to Paki's place of business. If the phone is still there I will get a Good Photo of the old schematic in toto. If it has found its home with the old lady I might get 1 more chance to get the photo if it needs to be hung on the wall by a professional - me.

[dontno]

I would have steam punked that bad boy!

[drbill]

Me too ! Sadly I was under contract.

[skittlespider]

Wow, this is nicely done.  I did something like this back when I was a kid.  I took my Grandma's old rotory-dial phone and replaced most of the interior wires with new ones.  To my surprise it still works to this day, but she doesn't really use it very often.

I may need to visit some antique shops and see if I can find myself one of these handcrank phones.  If I can make anything close to what you've got here, I'll be happy.

[drbill]

If you can find one it will be easy.