Mr BW writes:
It’s starting to look a bit more like a 70s payphone
I worked out how to divert the money from the coin slots, down through the hole bored with my new Big Wood Drill Bit, and into the coin return tray. I just needed a ‘catcher’ to divert the coins out through the hole to the front of the ‘phone’. I used a scrap piece of aluminium, so no cost there.
The outline phone shape is now appearing from the block and has all the essential elements. I had to take a little artistic licence and move the dial slightly down within the body compared to the real phones, as its mechanism interferes with the cradle and I definitely want the dial to work. It only notices if you put the pictures side by side.
You can probably work out the elements for yourselves, but the large horizontal slot across the top will take the cradle and handset from the old phone I cut up. The bezel and dial with its mechanism will fit into the large round hole and the catcher and coin tray will insert into the cut out about half way down the right hand side. The money of course goes into the hole just below the dial and needs a metal cover with appropriate slots.
The same version phone had many updates for the money mechanisms as we went through decimalisation and inflation. We have decided to go for the version using 2p and 10p coins as this is the one we were familiar with back in the day.
I also had a spare lock in my box of useful things (but no key, so not that useful). With a suitable surround it will make a perfect mock locking mechanism for the phone’s cash box.
There has also been a slight update to the version I am making. I had thought that all the payphones had the armoured cord but this was a later feature. The cord on the domestic phone I bought was worn and kinked but is correct for the payphone. Surprisingly you can still buy replacements in the correct ‘elephant grey’, so another £7 to the cost and a running total of £130.95.
Now, there is one thing that I can’t locate that I need to finish off The Phone Box Project. After a lot of searching, BW found the exact thing, wrapped in a paper WHS 45rpm record bag, as she knew it was, but only in white, whereas black is needed. BW asked the only other person we know who might have this thing, but he does but doesn’t.
So… this thing… Letraset in black in 16 point (or even a smidge bigger) Arial/Helvetica or similar font (which seem to be the nearest to the original GPO font used). Ideally two each of the letters to make ’10p’ and ‘2p’ (to allow for trials of the effect of lacquer on dry transfer). Very long shot but does anyone still have any of this Letraset they would part with?
Month: September 2026
The red hot pokers have loved the summer weather this year.
There are lots of new varieties around, and the smaller ‘popsicle’ series have proved excellent, even if it is not easy to tell the mango from the lemon from the orange from the papaya from the banana. Despite originating from South Africa, they do seem to be winter hardy, even in the colder north.
Other than the decorative ones, for once we haven’t seen many slugs and snails this year.
That said, I suspect they are hiding deep down in the soil, lying in wait for wetter weather.
We have had very few wasps this year (the bees are relieved as an attack can kill a colony in a couple of days and we finally have strong colonies again), and there were weeks without small birds too, although some of them, especially the wagtails, seem to be returning now.
It’s also been a very strange year for biennials and annuals.
Teasels, sown last year, just sat as rosettes until a couple of weeks ago, and now have small teasels about 6″ off the ground, whereas normally they would be knee-high at least. Nicotiana too are stunted with small flowers. We haven’t had the extremes of heat or dryness experienced in the south, and nothing has suffered extreme stress, so I’m not sure what is going on there.
Still, as they say in The People’s Emergency Briefing, this year’s weather is the most stable it will ever be, so we’d best get used to it.
Mr BW writes:
Fun fact 2: don’t read this bit if you are eating.
Following on from an earlier comment from Delcatto about the ‘unique aroma’ of the public phone box in the 70s…
First of all I have to say that whilst I do admit that a roadside bush might have received the occasional highly alkaline feed, I never felt that a phone box was a place to use as a loo, just no, why would you?
However, others clearly did and this was much more than just a hygiene problem, which of course led to later design boxes being open at the bottom to allow them to be washed out by the rain etc.
One of the 1970s modification to increase security of the cash box under the phone added a low down lock and armoured sliding door mechanism, behind which hid the cash box. However, the propensity for the boxes to be used as public loos by inebriated lads on their way back from the local led to high levels of ammonia. The highly caustic and corrosive nature of which rusted the sliding mechanisms, so the sliding door could not be opened to retrieve the cash boxes…nice…
The next version removed the sliding door and is the one I am copying.
Mr BW writes:
It was now time for a bit of dismantling and destruction.
First, sorry, came the end of the old phone. I needed the handset, dial, dial bezel and cradle for my mock payphone, so, sadly the angle grinder had to come out. In my defence there are thousands of these phones around and there was really no other option, but yes I do still feel a little guilty at breaking up a bit of history. The result was the following bits for me to use:
I have also been playing with my newly purchased extra large 2 foot long 40mm diameter drill to make the hole to allow the money to drop down through the body of the wood.
It has added £29 to my costs so far and I can’t say I would have bought it other than for this.
I also tried to make the reject coin tray, but it just didn’t look right.
Whilst searching the web for ‘vending machine spares’ I glanced over at a drawer and had an idea, a ‘shell type’ drawer handle turned upside down looks exactly like a money tray. At £3.95 it was an easy choice.
The challenge now is joining up the hole with the money slot and accessing the hole from the front to divert the coins into the tray, rather than just falling out of the bottom. Some metalwork will be needed but I can see how it will come together.
All in I am now up to £123.95.
From a lady we have known for many years, now in her mid-70s, in the middle of a discussion about AI: “But I thought AI was just the voice?”
From a state pension age lady of modest means: “I’m going to write to Mr Burnham and tell him to stick his pension rise, I’m not going to pay tax, I’ll be a lot worse off than if we had no rise!” (and no amount of explaining by me could convince her that, in the worst case scenario, she would only lose 20% of the amount over £12,570, not 20% of her entire income – the media have a lot to answer for in the way they have headlined this story this week)
From another of the same group of 3 ladies over state pension age, when I pointed out that those receiving ‘state benefits’ (which they were discussing in a derogatory way) actually included all those people, such as themselves, receiving a state pension: “But there are only 4.1 million people getting state pension in the UK!” I then pointed out that that could not possibly be true as there are over 70 million people in the UK now, with a median age of around 40. No amount of explanation could convince her otherwise as she said she’d “heard it on the news”. Investigating on getting home, I discovered there are 13.2 million people receiving state pension overall, of whom (in the recent past) 4.1 million people were receiving the new (from 2016) state pension rates. Why common sense is so uncommon these days, and how people’s inability to think logically about numbers baffles me.
From me to Mr BW when he retorted to my comment that the t-shirt he was wearing was filthy and what would today’s delivery men think, by saying that at least he was dressed: I was still bimbling bout in my dressing gown: “But I’m not customer facing!”
Mr BW writes:
To keep the theme going whilst we are doing all those outdoor jobs before the weather closes in, here are a couple of fun facts from my favourite phone website.
There were quite a few variations in design of the 700 series public payphones through the 60s and 70s. As I have mentioned before, the one I am copying is from the early 70s and so the style BW and I remember using. It is this one, in grey:
One thing I did learn when we were buying the phone box last year is that some have had their rear panels replaced (the side with the phone etc attached) and so the maker’s foundry marks on the lower part are lost. I always assumed this was because the panel had simply rusted out. Not so. Apparently the very early 700 series phones were not terribly secure against theft of their cash boxes. I also have a 1970s railway station chocolate machine and am amazed that the only thing stopping you getting at the cash inside is a catch and a flimsy lock. A decent screwdriver as a lever to pop the top cover over the latch and you are in, no need to worry about the lock.
So to fun fact no. 1. In 1979 they upgraded security by producing a more secure cash box mechanism so you couldn’t prize it off the backboard or lever it open. Crim’s being ever more resourceful and in an attempt to make sure they got away before the Rozzers in their Granadas arrived, decided that if they couldn’t access the cash from inside the box then they would go around the back. So they began simply smashing their way through the rear telephone box panels with sledgehammers and just taking the whole assembly away to be cut open at their leisure. I guess this was the original inspiration for the 1990s ram raiding of cash machines. The result of course was a phone box needing a new rear panel etc.
Our local shops where I grew up had 4 phone boxes in a cube. This of course meant they were all effectively back to back which might be why I never witnessed this theft. Nor did I live in the middle of a city where I suspect it was more prevalent.
However, our box, with its replacement rear panel, has clearly been the victim of a brutal assault in its earlier life and is likely still suffering the effects from PTSD (Postbox Traumatic Sledgehammer Destruction). Poor thing.
Mr BW writes:
Regular readers will have already seen Part 1 of my exciting saga and will be excitedly waiting for Part 2.
(insert advert here for a random washing up liquid, if most other pages these days can do it then so can I)
As a recap, at the end of the last episode I had the black backboard, signs and shelving unit installed in the red telephone kiosk.
At this point I began the search for a grey/black 1970s pay phone for it.
I assumed that, with the tens/hundreds of thousands made, there must be loads knocking around.
Wrong.
They were taken out by BT and broken up for scrap. I have seen just one for sale in the last 2 years and it went for £800 plus auction charges and was a pile of junk needing complete restoration.
Time for a rethink.
In my (extensive) searches I saw one on a theatre prop rental site. It was made from wood, quoted as being fine for stage use.
That gave me an idea: I could make one.
I had a piece of Glulam, left over from our building works, that had been sitting in my workshop waiting for a purpose. Glulam is basically a wooden laminate joist that can be used instead of a steel joist. This leftover piece is a bit off the end of the joist holding up the gabled roof over our single-storey bedroom and craft room. We wouldn’t have chosen a Glulam joist, but, in 2021, in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic, steels were not readily available so it was Glulam or delay building works by an unknown amount of time.
With a slice off the bottom rotated and stuck to the end it is the correct overall dimensions for a 1970s phone.
Then I bought an old not working BT 1970s domestic wall phone for £11. It s a type 711, full details from my now favourite website here.
The insides are a wonder of nuts, bolts, resistors and mechanical wizardry, Not a semiconductor in sight.
I feel a little guilty about breaking it up but, unlike the 705 phone box phones, they weren’t broken up for scrap, and so there are literally thousands of them out there, just search on your favourite auction site.
The plan is to put the wooden bit and the cannibalised phone together, with a few bits of scrap metal bent into shape for the money slot and coin reject tray. Again, thanks to my now favourite website, I have dimensions and the correct pantone for the grey paint, which is still readily available.
Money spent so far: with the 711 phone, I am now £91 in against a theoretical £2,500 to buy an interior.
One can only wonder who had the number Shepherdswell 830452, and why they had a wall phone (receiver sits on the top) rather than a table phone (receiver sits on the body of the phone).
Mr BW writes…
After our refurbished telephone box was installed early last year the hunt was on for a suitable 1970s interior as it came as a red cast shell with no insides.
And there the problems began.
I discovered that it is quite easy to buy a replica 1930s A/B interior with Bakelite phone for around £2,500 plus plus, as there are a few companies making them. Some advertise a 1970s dial phone interior, but the reality is they don’t actually have any phones available, even of you were comfortable with paying over £2,500 for it.
The problem with 1970s interiors is that they were scrapped by BT as they modernised phone boxes to what we see today, the polished metal push button phones.
if you can find one of those lovely old grey or black dial phones then they can go for £1000, but then they are falling apart. Even the red ones, which were used in guest houses or places like hospitals, start at £400, and that is just for the phone, excluding backboards or signage. But they just aren’t right.
So, what to do?
Well, the easy bit was the backboard and signage. I started at a wonderful website. It is a true geeks’ site, where you can learn everything you don’t even know you need to know about phones and phone boxes. It is from the 90s and difficult to navigate, but is simply superb and I applaud the writers for preserving such important social history. if you want to know the pack size of the screws issued to installing engineers in 1966 then it will tell you. If you want to know how much paint is needed to repaint your kiosk, then it tells you that too.
Using the dimensions and specifications from plans on the website I started to build my own interior. I was aiming for the London Provincial STD Area, Diagram EC 2086 from here as it was the style I and BW grew up with.
My search coincided with our local DIY store closing down and selling everything off. The backboard is a £25 piece of a big sheet of plywood. The frames are made from chrome effect bathroom tile edging pieces being sold at 50p a length, 5 lengths, so £2.50. The black paint was also £2.50. Meanwhile period correct hi-res posters were available to download for free from my now favourite website (thank you again), so I printed them up and laminated them. A couple of days work and £30 spent so far and I had the basic interior correct to the 1970s.
A shelving unit was next. In the stages of planning to make one to the designs on the website, up popped one on ebay for £50. It was a perfect 1970s one advertised with a ‘money tray’, which is actually a tray to rest your cigarette whilst chatting. Sold.
So I am now £80 in against a theoretical £2,500 to buy an interior and I have all I need, I think.
Part 2 moves on to the phone itself, and then there’s part 3, but it will be a while before I get to write it all up, as it’s a bad weather project, and right now there is a fruit harvest to bring in and metal labels to make for our fruit trees before the plastic ones disintegrate and we can’t tell our ‘Ellison’s Orange’ from our ‘Tydeman’s Late’.
Because he does much more interesting things than me these days.
And he has more active hours in his day than me, so more time to write (after I am asleep, for example), so there might be more regular posts again. He has also managed to conquer Gimp for reducing photos in size, which I have not. I don’t like posts without photos, and as I can only resize photos on the upstairs desktop (with a very old version of Photoshop which won’t work on the laptops’ Windows11), which I don’t get to very often now, I am less inclined to write.
Mr BW closed down his old blog a couple of years ago when we finally sold Coven Sud and no longer had enough h0ney to sell online, but he misses writing about his crafty, creative and gardeny exploits. These days there are far too many people writing much more interesting things about their daily lives than I/he/we ever could but we do have some fairly unique USPs due to our location and lifestyle and love of keeping rural crafts alive.
So… watch this space…
And he saw a red kite the other day.
… best not live in a glass house:
Definitely autumnal here now. And definitely some weird things happening – crocosmia that have somehow grown to 7′ tall, but biennials like teasels that are in their second year but are still large rosettes with not a sign of seed heads. And runner beans very late – we have only 3 bags blanched and in the freezer (we only freeze when we have surplus over our immediate needs). No early frosts please or we won’t have enough to last through the winter.
The far distant landscape has gone from straw golden and/or parched to green again with just a week or so of intermittent light rain. Our lawn grass and the cut grass paths in the orchard/wildflower meadow never went brown in the heat as it’s ‘the right type of grass’ for extreme climate – aka ancient upland sheep pasture.