AE 90 dial card

[Greg G.]

I cleaned up my black AE 90 some because I decided I want to try to mount it somewhere so it's not just kicking around.  I didn't do a real thorough cleaning job, just handwashed it and buffed it a bit, although I put the finger wheel in Oxyclean because it was very grimy.  

Anyway, I discovered that these have a different type of dial card.  I wanted to use one of the replicas I got from OPW, but they don't fit.  I looked on OPW to see if he had one for this type of AE wheel, but he doesn't.  Where does one find this type of dial card?  I suppose I could just keep the backing and print something on a small circle of paper, but my printer doesn't print the kind of high resolution I would like.

[Phonesrfun]

Looks like the AE cards for the plastic finger wheels were slightly different from the cards for the AE metal finger wheels.  Probably the same diameter as the metal version with different notches.  Definitely a different diameter than Western number cards.  Western Electric at least used the same style of card for all their dials from the number 2 dial right up to the end.

Maybe calling Old Phone Works on the phone would help.  They may have something they don't list on line.

Or try adele0283, an e-bay seller that usually has AE number cards, but I see all of what she currently has are for the metal dial wheel cards.  I have bought a bunch of stuff from her.

Or try Chuck Irwin in Portland 503-253-1124.

Or print something up on the printer and cut it out manually.

[Greg G.]

Looks like the AE cards for the plastic finger wheels were slightly different from the cards for the AE metal finger wheels.  Probably the same diameter as the metal version with different notches.  Definitely a different diameter than Western number cards.  Western Electric at least used the same style of card for all their dials from the number 2 dial right up to the end.

Maybe calling Old Phone Works on the phone would help.  They may have something they don't list on line.

Or try adele0283, an e-bay seller that usually has AE number cards, but I see all of what she currently has are for the metal dial wheel cards.  I have bought a bunch of stuff from her.

Or try Chuck Irwin in Portland 503-253-1124.

Or print something up on the printer and cut it out manually.

I could try the last option, but my printer doesn't have the sharp resolution that I would like.  The dial card in this case consists of two pieces.  The "backing", as I call it, is the notched and tabbed part and is the thickness of a business card and has a glossy finish.  The part with the phone number on it is just thin paper.  Here are a couple more pics for comparison.  I placed the replica from OPW on the finger wheel so you can see how it won't fit.

I suppose I could just try to make them myself.  I have several biz cards from various sources I could use.  But I really like the "art deco-ish" design of AE cards.

[bingster]

Nine times out of ten, it's not the printer's resolution that's the problem, it's the resolution of the image that's being printed.  Make sure whatever program you're using has the image resolution set at 300 pixels per inch.  72ppi is standard internet resolution, so many image editing programs set the resolution at 72 by default, and that's way too low for printing.