This paper proposes a new method of weighted template matching for machine-printed numeral recognition. The proposed weighted template matching, which emphasizes the feature of a pattern using adaptive Hamming distance on local feature areas, improves the recognition rate while template matching processes an input image as one global feature. Template matching is vulnerable to random noises that generate ragged outlines of a pattern when it is binarized. This paper offers a method of chain code trimming in order to remove ragged outlines. The method corrects specific chain codes within the chain codes of the inner and the outer contour of a pattern. The experiment compares confusion matrices of both the template matching and the proposed weighted template matching with chain code trimming. The result shows that the proposed method improves fairly the recognition rate of the machine-printed numerals.