Hole Punches

Whilst I was at PlannerCon Europe, someone asked me the difficult question of

'How many hole punches or paper punches do you own then Steve?'

I wasn't able to give the lady and answer, because I honestly didn't know, quite a few... which isn't really an accurate count really!  Like most things connected with Philofaxy, I started with one and they sort of multiplied!

So the number is actually nine, I've excluded some of our general office 2 hole punches because they don't get used for organisers.

So breaking them down in to the different types. In the next photo we have the Staples Arc punch at the top of the photo, and the Filofax/Miracle Bind punch, these two punch 'slits' in to the paper rather than holes. I mainly use the Staples Arc one for my William Hannah disc bound notebooks. I print my own inserts for these then punch them myself.

I don't have any of the Filofax notebooks so the other punch is rather under used at the moment!

Then we come to these four. The top one is a standard A4 4 hole punch 80-80-80mm spacing which I just bought in a local supermarket for my A4 Filofax.

The next one is the 'ME MY' adjustable punch, I bought this one to use with Deskfax although I've since take three of the punch blocks out. We will look at this one in a bit more detail in a moment.

The next black one is my KWTrio this one has preset adjustments for A5, Personal, A6, Pocket/Mini and gets used quite a bit.

Lastly my Filofax A5 punch, I bought this one back in about 2005 when I bought my first A5 Finsbury, at that time I wasn't aware of other punches at all. I just needed something for the A5 I had just bought.

Then we have two Rapesco punches the old model and the new one, the new one as you might recall has a paper guide and you can punch A5 with it as well as Pocket, Personal and A6. I also used this one for punching my business cards!

And lastly in the collection a Filofax Pocket size punch.

Close up of the Filofax pocket punch, I marked it for punching the three holes in my business cards!

So going back to this punch. It is quite large and heavy and it comes with 6 punch blocks that can be spaced using the approximate measurements on the base.

Turning it around you can see the thumb screws that tighten the punch blocks in position. There is a central position as well, I used this to measure from so I can check that the blocks are not just the correct spacing but also the central on the base.

It can be a bit tricky to set up initially or to change, but once you have got a reference to work from it is fairly easy after that because you can take the base off and move the blocks until you can see through the holes in your reference and align it that way.

Adding punch blocks can be a bit fiddly too the first time you do it, but you just undo the thumb screw on the back and turn the block over side ways, push the lever down partially and the block pops out the front.

Ask I tend to create all my own inserts these days have the right hole punch is essential.