Hand-lettered, White

circa 1944-1946

The fourth major design replaced the previous buff-colored reel stock with a white stock. Some of the earliest white reels actually were light grey or off-white in color, but these were from transitional production runs and the pure white reels were more common.

The shift to linear labelling begun during buff reel production continued; most white hand-lettered reels combined linear lettering in the indicia with concentric captioning (as in the example at right).

New mounting machines were brought into service at this time which required two V-shaped alignment notches at the reel's edge. (Earlier gold foil, blue ring, and buff reels were mounted on machines requiring only one notch). Most hand-lettered white reels were manufactured with two notches, though some of the earliest were mounted on older machines using only a single notch.