I recently picked up a Western Electric 1013 Test set (Aka Buttinski) rotary test phone.
These are about $10 a piece on eBay in the US, and when having a pile of other stuff sent over (*cough* Nortel Millennium *cough*) I figured I’d add one of these.
I imagine these were produced in massive numbers, they’re electrically very simple, hardened and feature a rubber strip for a “more secure hands-free operation” – Luxury.
Electrically these are very simple, and it’s 3 screws to open the whole unit up, and the top and bottom half separate with spring loaded contacts for the dial so you don’t need to unplug anything (I imagine because they had a habit of getting broken dials when being smashed around).
The amazing Telephone Collectors International library has the overview of these phones, complete with the great images.
Oddly there is no ringer circuit, bell or lamp, so although you could answer an incoming call with one of these, there’s no way you’d know it was ringing, which reminded me of this sketch from “Not the Nine O’Clock News”.
According to the datasheet these phones feature an “type 11C dial”.
TCI library also has the docs for the Type 10 and Type 11 dial, which, according to Ma Bell, is not field serviceable, and should be swapped out rather than attempting a repair.
Alas the rotary dial on mine was running slightly slow, I’ve a feeling Western Electric doesn’t manufacture these any more, so I decided I’d have to fix it myself.
So I stripped down the dial and gave it a good clean.
The dial has a neat little rubber boot on the inside to protect it from gunk, and came apart and went back together easily enough, even if I did inadvertently let out all the spring tension and have to wind it back in, and put the dial on offset by 90 degrees.
Oddly the finger stop moves when you dial – I thought this was an issue with a loose part, but it’s by design, to allow the dial to be more compact, which makes total sense as if I had stopped it from moving I wouldn’t be able to dial higher numbers – Glad I worked that one out eventually.
With the dial cleaned up and adjusted, she’s dialing within spec.
I’ll give the rest of the orange plastic body a polish and it’s off to join the other butt sets.
