Notes, Photos, Likes, Listens

Short content: a microblog of status updates or short notes
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Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
After my note earlier about progress on restoring my 1936 Royal KHM typewriter, a colleague reminded me that a KHM makes an appearance in the Taylor Swift song Fortnight. Then they asked if I was just collecting machines from her videos? While I fully expect to pick up a Royal Ten one day, it’s a total coincidence. She’s obviously got great taste in vintage typing machines.

Wiped off the worst of dust and grime on the exterior of my 1936 Royal KHM standard typewriter. Cleaned up the carriage a bit and did a light oiling. Cleaned out the paper tray and platen area. Spooled up some new ribbon. After a few quick tweaks, this typewriter is now at least minimally usable. This has one of the cleanest and crisp typing actions of any of my machines despite being one of the dirtiest and worst conditioned machines in my fleet. It has a reasonable carriage return speed, but may be one of the fastest typers I’ve got. I can’t wait to see how well it does once it’s had a full COA. The tabulator is going to require some heavy work.

Yellow index card with red ruled lines featuring a type sample of a 1936 Royal KHM typewriter in Royal Pica typeface

Because I often buy index cards in tranches of 5,000 to 10,000 at a time, I’ve noticed that Oxford recently dropped their brick of 500 4×6″ index cards to $6.47, a new low for the past year when they’ve generally been hovering in the $8.50-9.50 range. As a competitive move, Amazon has dropped their competing brick to $5.82, also a new annual low. If your card index habit is price sensitive, now is the time to buy.

Three notebooks stacked up next to three separate piles of 1,300 index cards.

Brodart has recently discontinued their salmon card index cards with pre-drilled holes -188-218. This has been a shift since the summer of 2025, though they’re still carrying the standard salmon index cards (without predrilled holds for card catalog rods).

A conversation with their customer service team seems to indicate there aren’t plans for discontinuing their other cards (blue, green, ivory, white, and buff), but: caveat emptor as they no longer list their card catalog furniture or their charging trays on their website, their Dewey Decimal tabbed cards are now gone, and Demco recently quit carrying their buff/red-lined Library of Congress cards this past year.

Incidentally, they’re doing a 20% discount on their index cards (and related circulation supplies) for the holidays right now, so stock up if you need them. 

In honor of Melvil Dewey’s 174th birthday yesterday, I’ve just purchased 6,000 cards in an attempt to get them to continue stocking them all and to have a happier 2026.