I caught the drill index bug 6-8 months ago and since then have purchased a half dozen or so. The first one I bought is a twin to this index show . Mine was rough looking when acquired and thus, bought cheap for Ebay standards. Mine was dark in appearance like the one shown. I chose to bead blast Mine which left it looking like clean new cast aluminum. I have not done anything else to mine yet as I am still deciding how I want to move forward with it.
Options I am still considering are as follows.
1) cold blue it and paint all raised number and letters.
2) Painting part of it and leaving the remainder the natural cast aluminum.
Personally I am a big fan of bead blasting the cast aluminum ones if they look rough when acquired like mine.
Both Morse and Cleveland drill bit companies at one time offered round cylindrical shaped wood indexes with metal tops that spin and align with the bit you need. Cleveland versions were wrapped with paper labels with blue and white color graphics. These seem to be very common and there is often one ore
two listed on Ebay at any given time. Morse versions of this style are larger in dimension and just dark stained and varnished wood. More well preserved versions of the Morse have chrome plated caps with drill sizes stamped into the steel. I chose to restain and varnish the one that I found. Morse also made smaller less fancy round wood drill bit indexes with simple removable lids, several of which I have also acquired. I continue to add more variations of cast aluminum drill indexes that I can afford as I find them.
At this point, I have number, letter, and fractional versions.
That is the most I can add to this conversation.
