chess position index cards?

Hi, I've read in many sources that chess players used to (still?) make recordings of positions they wanted to study, in notebooks usually, and many used index cards or other methods of making collections of positions to drill and to learn. There's Botvinnik's famous notebooks (I can't find a picture from a page of his notebook anywhere on the internet) and many others, the Polgars drilled with huge collections of positions on index cards, etc, but I don't find a single image of what these diagrams look like.

I have searched the internet for a way of recording such positions and haven't found anything. If anyone here a) keeps index cards of positions,  or b) keeps notebooks in which you record positions, can you please either describe how you make the diagrams and/or include a photo of what a hand-drawn diagram looks like.

I'm interested in hand drawn, not computer-database positions. I want the experience of making the positions by hand. 

I have recorded positions from adjourned otb games by making an eight by eight grid of hand drawn lines, and putting the letters k, n, q, p etc, to signify pieces, and I've circled the letters of one side to show that they were white or black, but a) I find the process of hand-drawing the grid tedious and messy, and b) I don't show which squares are white or black. 

Also, I'm not sure if using letters to signify the pieces is the best, or time-honoured way of doing it. I imagine using pictorial symbols would be nice.

The only source I found online is this http://imgur.com/gallery/dLtYl

and it suffers from the tedium of handdrawing the grid, although I think I could go with his system of drawing the symbols.

does anyone have any method they use that they'd like to share?

What's with the dots?  I just draw a box, divide it in half, divide those in half, and one more time, and then repeat this orthogonally and you have a chessboard.

I don't keep index cards or anything though.  Computers are so much more efficient.

yes wafflemaster, those dots for the grid basically guarantees that nobody will use that method. I'm hoping someone on here, maybe someone old school (since I am def old school ) keeps index cards and can show how they do it. 

I am sorry but with computers there are much easier ways to store positions.

I got this idea from a book called "Chess Master.. at any age" by Rolf Wetzell

http://i.imgur.com/7HBqF5g.jpg

thank you cubis. I am going to look that up today in the library. 

I used a set of diagram and piece ink stamps to put tactics training positions on index cards some fifteen years ago. More recently, I've used software to create diagrams that I print on carf stock.

My pawn ending flash cards (containing every blue diagram in the first chapter of Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual) are nearly always in my chess bag, and I use them often both in personal training and in teaching. I'm nearing the point where I instantly know the plans and moves for both sides within a second of glancing at each card. I can do this with ~85% at present. It was 50% two years ago.

the missing link! That's perfect! Where did you get piece ink stamps? I already found a board diagram to print out, but rubber inked piece stamps would be perfect!! Did you have them made customs, or did you buy them? I'm going to google search them now. 

I have not located them on the internet. If possible, can you post a picture of what one of your index cards look like? I imagine you have a set of stamps, diff for white and black pieces, or you used red and black ink to differentiate?  Rubber stamps is the perfect solution. 

I bought them from the US Chess Federation in 1996. They are an old postal chess tool, and were sold as such. I suspect they are no longer available. I passed mine on to my nephew seven or eight years ago for reasons I can no longer remember.

The board was one stamp. There were twelve piece stamps--two for each piece. Using different stamps for red and for black ink avoided bleeding.

I saw a post on chess.com that someone remembered rubber stamp chess sets sold by USCF. No longer. They don't carry such an item anymore, and there's none on ebay. Too bad!

yes, that's brilliant. I've searched for 45 minutes online for a rubber stamp chess piece set, and nothing, nada. That would have been the ticket. I'll figure something out. 

If anyone wants to sell a chess piece rubber stamp kit, consider it sold. thanks. 

I'll see my nephew in a couple of days. I'll ask him if he still has the set that I gave him. Maybe he'll put it on ebay.

hehe, awright. Man, I can just see it selling for a hundred bucks!

I use Chess Captor, which also appears no longer available. When the box with that software dies, I'll need to use ChessBase, which works well enough after some tinkering with the colors to get something that prints well in b/w.

you print out positions with your printer? can you place pieces anywhere on a virtual board and print it out? Does it take long to place the pieces? I can't do anything too complicated with the computer, but if I could do something akin to cut and paste a piece onto a board, and print it out without too much trouble, I guess that could work. I just thought that the engaged eye-hand tactile activity of stamping the positions would facilitate memory. 

in searching for rubber stamp chess piece on the internet I learn that Marcel Duchamp came up with the idea for correspondence chess. cool. USCF doesn't carry them anymore, but I sent them an email asking if they might have one lying around, used or otherwise. 

It's the same process that I use to create diagrams for my blog. ChessBase can turn any chess position into a jpeg file. I use text editing software (MS Word on one computer; Open Office Text on another) to arrange the jpegs on the paper where I want them.

I like Chess Captor because it gives me easily printable black and white diagrams. I normally use a colored board in Chess Base for viewing and for pretty diagrams for my blog. When I want jpegs for flash cards and other printable materials, I need to change the square colors from within the program. 

I could use photo editing software to convert colored diagrams, but I wasn't happy with the results when I tried that in the past.

This is a diagram created with Chess Captor.