'Can I fit bigger rings to my Make X Model Y in Size Z?' Is a question I am often asked.
People start the year and as the year progresses so the amount of paper they are carrying increases etc. I'm sure you know the story well.
The answer is 'Yes' and 'No' !
Why you might ask... well let's look at the mechanics of rings.
Rings are available in a variety of sizes and often in gold and silver. In the past they were painted/powder coated a few different colours as well.
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| Image Source - Van der Spek |
The different sizes of organiser and different ring sizes result in different dimensions for the mounting points of the rings on to the base plate. As you can see below Standard (Personal) uses the same base plates for both 25 and 30mm rings. Likewise Senior (A6) uses the same for 20 and 25mm as well as the Gillio 23mm A6 rings.
Sadly, on Junior (Pocket) size they have different mounting point dimensions for the 16 and 20mm rings. Therefore you can't easily upgrade a pocket from 16mm to 20mm rings. You would have to do some surgery to remove the backplate and replace it with the correct one. Not impossible, but you would need to be reasonably skilled to do this sort of work, to re-stitch the exterior and interior leather back together again.
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| Image Source - Van der Spek |
As you can see some conversions are reasonably easy to do 25mm -> 30mm on Standard (Personal/Medium) size are more or less a straight swap.
However, this is where an element of 'No' you can't swap the rings comes in.
Whilst they will physically fit the back plate and work etc, there might be an issue with the space left for the pages, increasing the ring size by 5mm in the above example, means that the thickness of the organiser might be increased by 5mm and the edge pages are moved 5mm closer to the outer edge of the organiser.
That said in some cases the designer obviously considered the larger ring size and the cover is 'bigger' than the normal size of rings and therefore some can take the larger rings without the pages/tabs sticking out beyond the edge of the organiser.
Is there a list of ones that can take bigger rings? Not as such, but a simple way of telling is to measure the distance from the middle of your paper stack in the organiser to the edge of the organiser when closed. The middle being the highest part of the curve of the rings and is therefore closer to the edge.
Also be aware of the top or the bottom of your stack of pages getting closer to the pen loop if there is one.
Another way of creating the additional space to allow for the increase in ring size is to go from using side tabs to top/bottom tabs.
Going down in ring size say from 30mm to 25mm isn't a problem as long as the ring mounting points are the same, you just need to exchange the rings over. And if you are careful removing the rings you can reverse the change easily should you want to go back to the original size.
I hope that helps and answers your questions, if not please leave a comment below and I will try to respond to your questions as quickly as possible.
So what questions or discussion points have you got for us today?
