8 5/8 x 5 3/4 x 4 1/8" exterior dimensions
putty color
A pittance of $5.00 at the local thrift shop also included a full set of Universal Paper Goods Stock No. 58-25 card dividers with both alphabetic and numeral printing.
Stock No. 721
Overall dimensions: 3.5 x 4.5 x 8"
There are a few places that still make card dividers for this size format, but I opted to make my own from 11 x 17″ card stock.
25/Set (PN 925)
I’ve been wanting some for use with 8.5 x 11″ index cards, but thought that most major stationers had quit manufacturing them decades ago. It turns out you can still get them from Tops via a variety of different office supply outlets, though closer to the range of $15-40 per pack. I’m sure these will work wonders in my Shaw-Walker filing cabinet.
Interestingly, one outlet I saw was pitching them for dividing files within a single a folder, but I’m guessing they weren’t aware of how these were used historically. (The entire group of 25 would fill up a standard manilla folder all by itself!) It’s sort of a shame that they only count up to 25 instead of 31 so that one could also easily use them as a days-of-the-month tickler file.
Made of steel; in green; with original key
The green paint is almost an exact match for our vintage Stanley thermos and my 1958 Olympia SM3 typewriter.
It dawns on me that I’ve never mentioned one of the great affordances of many of the older card index cabinets is that they’re designed to be able to completely remove one or more drawers at a time and use at your desk. On an almost daily basis, I pull out at least one drawer from my cabinet and place it on my desk and it allows me to actively work with collections of over 7,000 cards at a time. This means that while the cabinet itself may seem like deep or “cold” storage, it’s really ongoing active storage that I can quickly and easily interact with depending on the range of projects I may be dealing with on a given day. Working on a different project for a bit? Put one drawer away and pull another…
Several of my cabinets have not only pull handles on the front of the drawers, but also have cut-out handles in the rear to be able to easily pull them out and move them around. This feature was also the reason many cabinets also had card rods. The cards could be physically held into the drawers to prevent the user from accidentally tipping the drawer and loosing all the cards into a random pile on the floor. Robert Pirsig describes a sad affair similar to this in his book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (Bantam Books, 1991).
Of course at the end of the day I can quickly slot the drawer right back into the cabinet for that clean desk look. And because today is the one year anniversary of the Eaton Fire, I’ll mention that it’s also pretty easy to pull a few of your favorite drawers out of the filing cabinet for fleeing your home office, evacuating your town, and being able to work for four months remotely. (Just remember to seat belt those drawers into the back seat if you don’t have card rods!)
Because I haven’t documented some of this portion of my process before, I thought I’d take a few photos of my C-Line document sorter which I use to do a fast sort of cards before filing into my card index. I bought it a while back from Brodart Library supplies and it comes in quite handy for sorting and filing documents. It’s got sections for sorting by alphabet, days of a month, months of the year, days of the week, and numbers up to 30,000 (which I primarily co-opt for Dewey Decimal sorting). The days of the month and month sections come in handy for use with my Memindex work, and the months of the year are useful for sorting receipts for expenses and at tax preparation time. In all, it’s fairly flexible analog office tool.
As I go through my stack of index cards, I use a Mitsubishi No. 772 pencil (the vermillion side) to underline topics for filing and cross-referencing purposes. This allows me to cross-index topics quickly as well.
I went through several hundred cards the other day and only had about 150-200 left for filing into the commonplace book section of my card index. Most of these cards were from 2025, but some dated into 2024 with a handful from as far back as 2023.
Over the coming days, I’m hoping to finish cleaning up some of the notes from this year’s reading work.
I’ve got word in for specific details about end dates for manufacturing and the last sales on some of these products. Apparently the last purchase of charging trays was someone wiping out their stock of 50 remaining units in the last two weeks.
This news comes a decade on the heels of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) announcing that it printed its last batch of library card catalog cards on October 1, 2015.
a steel task lamp in gray paint with a dual pipe adjustable arm and art deco fluting
Thrift purchase for $24.98 from Goodwill on 2025-10-02.
A mid-19th century typing accessory in steel with putty colored paint.
9" x 7" x 4 3/4"
A punch for making file tabs of 2 1/4" x 3/4"
P/N 68500
When you use as many tabbed index card dividers as I do, this can be incredibly useful. It’s just the right size for doing 1/3 cut tabs on 4″ x 6″ index cards.
Acquired at Acts Thrift Store on October 7, 2025 for $2.50.
Heavy steel punch in gray enamel with chromed handle
It was in pretty solid shape with some heavy dust, light pitting on some of the steel, and some hints of rust on one of the bars. A quick cleaning today with some degreasers and anti-rust solution along with a brass bristle brush has brought it back to its original life. It really is stunning how solid this piece of office equipment still is all these years later.
Wilson Jones Co., one of the largest office supply manufacturers in the United States, was purchased by Swingline Inc. in 1959 and is now a part of ACCO brands who boldly state that Wilson Jones was the inventor of the 3 ring binder, though evidence indicates its origin predates this. The “Hummer” was one of their original and storied punches.
I’m unsure of the date of manufacture of my punch, though it was made in their Chicago, IL plant.
With the grey enamel and shiny chrome, I’m thinking this 4 pound 13 ounce punch will match nicely with my 1949 Henry Dreyfuss-designed Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter.
Black cast iron and metal
Six slots for organizing your typing papers and envelopes as well as space for your stapler, tape dispenser, and various other desk drawer implements.
In the 1943 film Basic Typing Methods, in the very opening seconds of the film, you’ll see the woman in the foreground pulling paper quickly from her desk drawer for typing. While it’s not immediately visible, she’s surely got a similar paper organizer in her drawer. (Pardon the heavily gendered references in the film.)
Ultimately, the paper organizer came to live in the top drawer of my executive tanker desk.
Acquired at the local Acts Thrift shop for about $2.00, this organizer was a no-brainer purchase.
A curved metal typing ruler for a variety of purposes including:
* curved erasing shield (especially useful for carbon copy packs to prevent carbon transfer)
* elite spacing letter counter
* line counter
* 8 inch ruler
The curved ruler comes with a convenient tab (here labeled “Elite”) for grabbing with one’s thumb and forefinger for placement into as well as removal from a carbon pack. They obviously came in both Pica and Elite versions to cover various typewriter typefaces.
Our friend Joe Van Cleave cleverly uses one to cleanly tear off paper from his Kerouac-like rolls of typing paper.
