Van der Spek - Standard Wide - A new size in the Touch Me range.

A lot of people asked Van der Spek for a Touch Me 'Personal Wide'. After some thought they have brought out a 'Standard Wide' version in their popular Touch Me range of ring bound organisers. 

Petra asked me if I would like to review a sample from the first batch that went on sale about a week ago. Of course I said yes. 

I'm not particularly keen on 'Personal Wide' as it's a size that was invented, it's almost ISO216 B6 size. To me using B6 size makes more sense because it is easier to scale inserts to that size. 

B6 is 125mm x 175mm whilst 'Personal Wide' is 121 x 172mm. The additional height of B6 is less of an issue and it's only 4 mm wider than 'Personal Wide' 

Obviously trying B6 or Personal Wide in a normal Standard even with 25mm rings isn't going to work, the pages stick out beyond the edge of the organiser! With 30mm rings the B6 paper pushes hard against the clasp!

The line at the edge of the B6 paper is where Personal Wide would finish, not that much different, but it just confirms that normal Standard size just isn't wide enough for every day use with the wider paper in 'Personal Wide' or B6. 

Standard fitted with 25mm rings

Now it is time to try out B6 in the new Standard Wide Van der Spek Touch Me. 

I'm pleased to confirm that even with 30mm rings fitted to the 'Standard Wide Touch Me, B6 fits perfectly and Personal Wide is 4 mm narrower, so no issues with that size either.

The Standard Wide Touch Me has been made generously sized to cope with being fitted with 30mm rings or 25mm rings if you wish.  

I used a stack of normal personal size inserts either side of B6 size paper to make sure that the B6 stack was in the middle of the rings, the peak of the arc of the rings and therefore at the widest point. 

Standard Wide fitted with 30mm rings

The rest of the design of the Standard Wide is the same as the normal Standard Touch Me, they both feature:

• Full width back pocket for larger sheets of paper
• Two pen loops, 
• Two full height secretarial pockets
• The inside front cover has a vertical slip pocket and also a full height zip pocket and a card pocket. 
• The inside back cover has 6 horizontal card slots on the front of the secretarial pocket.

Standard Wide in Stardust Velvet Matt Croco Leather

  

It should be noted that the inside leather goes the full width of the organiser, it's not cut out like on some other brands. The inside of the full width back pocket and the reverse side of the secretarial pockets are finished in a synthetic leather like material. 

The Standard Wide is also available in Noir(Black), Parme, Beige Croco and Stardust Velvet Matt Croco leathers. 

The Croco leathers are slightly more expensive because they take the trouble to line up the pattern on the interior and exterior leather covers as well as the clasp. Even at this price point Van der Spek go that extra distance to make sure your organiser looks perfect. 

Other than the choice of leather and the size of the rings it's not possible to customise the Touch Me range, but they are 'ready to ship' within 5 days of ordering subject to them being in stock. 

They come boxed in a black box featuring the company logo and were well packed and shipped by FedEx to my door within a few days of despatch. 

The Touch Me Standard Measures:

HEIGHT	194mm | 7.64"
WIDTH (CLOSED PLANNER)	146mm | 5.75"
WIDTH (FLAT OPEN PLANNER)	310mm | 12.2"
DEPTH	46mm | 1.81"

The Touch Me Standard Wide Measures:

HEIGHT	194mm | 7.64"
WIDTH (CLOSED PLANNER)	172mm | 6.77"
WIDTH (FLAT OPEN PLANNER)	362mm | 14.25"
DEPTH	46mm | 1.81"

See the full Van der Spek Touch Me range here. 

Thank you to Petra Van der Spek for making the samples available to me to try out. 

Now the exciting bit......

Win the Van der Spek Standard Wide featured in this post. 

To win the organiser you need to answer the following questions: 

1. In what year was Van der Spek Leather Goods first established?

2. What is the title of Steve Morton's new book that will be released on 3rd January 2022?

3. What is the name of the plannercast (podcast) that Steve co-hosts with Karine Tovmassian? 

Answers to all questions are in this post or recent posts on Philofaxy.

Please send your answers to philofaxy@gmail.com the competition will close at 23:00 GMT Monday 3rd January 2022. Please title your email 'Van der Spek' or similar so they can easily be filtered. 

Again a big thank you to Petra Van der Spek for her support. 

The boring but essential bit....

Terms and conditions of the Van der Spek give-away:

1. Only one entry per person.
2. Last date for entries 3 January 2022 at 23:00 GMT as specified by the United Kingdom National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. 
3. Entry is open to anyone on planet earth.
4. The number of prizes available is 1, the only colour available is as shown in the post. There are no alternatives.
5. The winning entry will be selected by a pseudo random generator more complex than Ernie the Premium Bond machine. 
6. The Judges decision is final.
7. No cash alternative is available.
8. No correspondence will be entered in to.

Further Information.

Web Site: https://www.vdsshop.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/VDSleathergoods
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vanderspekorganiserfans/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vdsshop/

Printing B6 Size Inserts

In previous posts about B6 organisers/inserts I have mentioned 'how easy' it is to print them from our existing set of inserts for A5 or A6 size inserts, what I failed to say was that you do need to add B6 as a page size to your printer set up or to Word to make the magic happen!

Hopefully I can correct that situation with this post. The route I'm going to take is to add the page size to Word. My screen shots are from Office 2016 for Mac, which is part of the Microsoft Office365 suite. However, I suspect it is similar in the Windows versions.

So on the Mac version you access the Page Set Up screen from the 'File' menu option.  And you will see your current setting as shown below.

Clicking on the up/down arrow on Paper Size you will see Manage Custom Sizes.. Click on that and up pops this box. As you can see here I have already set up a custom paper size for Filofax Personal size. To add B6 is just the same.

I click on the + sign and that adds a new option. Double click on the name and give it a name of B6. Then enter the paper size dimensions 125mm by 176mm. The 'Non-Printable Area' will be filled in automatically and the measurements are dependent on your own printer. 

Once you have entered the details click OK to finish.

You are now ready to print inserts on B6 size paper.

Open the inserts file in Word and when you are ready to print you will need to 'Scale to fit' and select the page size B6 and Word will scale the file to 59% or if on your printer set up set the scale size to 59%.

On some printers you will need to add a new paper size of B6, I can't go in to detail on this because the screens will look different in each case. However, in theory it should be possible to do assuming your printer can handle paper smaller than A5 (most can) via their Manual or Envelope feed.

Remember when printing like this that you can't double side print using the automatic duplexer, so you will be doing that manually.

So you will print All Odd numbered pages first. Re-stack the paper and then then print All Even numbered pages. It is best to set the print order to Normal rather than reverse or auto. So you know the order in which the pages will be printed.

I hope that helps. Please do leave a comment below if you need more information to help solve the mysteries of printing your own B6 inserts or any other sizes for that matter!

Other posts on B6 are here.

Width Guide

Whilst doing research in to B6 organisers, I was looking through past postings on the Van der Spek Facebook group and came across a variety of posts about Van der Spek Custom organisers that had been widened to take different width pages.

There seemed to be some confusion about the additional width required for different brands/designs of planner pages.

Here is my take on this problem.

Page Size	Actual size	Additional Width(mm)
Personal/Standard	171 x 95 mm	0 mm
Franklin Covey	172 x 108 mm	13 mm
Personal 'Wide'	172 x 121 mm	26 mm
B6	176 x 125 mm	30 mm

Remember Personal size is the same as Standard in Van der Spek language. Same page size, same ring spacing etc.

Van der Spek also offer the option to increase the length of the clasp, but please note that the clasp length is independent of the organiser width.

Therefore just because you have increased the width it does not mean you have to also increase the length of the clasp as well.

Increasing the length of the clasp just means you can stuff more paper in to the pockets!

If in doubt ask Petra for advice on the options.
Further Information.

Web Site: http://www.vdsshop.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/VDSleathergoods
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vanderspekorganiserfans/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vdsshop/

B6 Ring Organisers

Recently I wrote about ISO B6 size and its potential use for ring bound organisers.

A quick refresher, B6 size paper measures 176mm x 125mm,  5 mm taller than Personal size, but 30 mm wider. So if you like the extra width of say A6, but you like the height of Personal size, then B6 might be the size for you.

A relatively new invention is 'Personal Wide' this is not an ISO size, but it is close to B6, just slightly narrower. However, the makers of these organisers might be persuaded in to making them true B6 size (an additional 5 mm width)

Last time I had been in search of a B6 ring-bound organiser, they are fairly thin on the ground. I had suggested a Custom Van der Spek and use the option of widening the basic design by 30mm. This would give you lots of options to customise the design to exactly your needs.

Gillio have a B6 six ring binder, but it is tucked away in amongst their Address Books on their website!

I believe the rings are 20mm size, but I've not had confirmation of that fact.

I'm awaiting confirmation of the size of the inserts that are fitted to this address book, they say 17.4 cm by 11.5 on the web page.

However, the tabs look quite big so the address book might be big enough to take B6 size pages.

In discussion about the previous post on one of the Facebook Groups, Jeff Damerham had spotted a Veesun B6 journal on Amazon UK, not real leather, but very cheap, so thank you Jeff for sharing a link to this one. I placed an order on Amazon France and it arrived within a few days.

It is not exactly a luxury item! It is PU leather and it has a very strange 'leather' loop closure.

However, it comes with a simple set of 15mm rings and a reasonable number of sheets of B6 kraft paper (approximately 70 sheets), not top quality, but it is ok to act as a test bed for different format inserts to try out.

As you will see from the Amazon page there are four different designs available. I went for the clock/penny farthing design!

It comes in a simple cardboard box packaged in the usual Amazon book shipping sleeve.

Here it is! It is a tri-fold design. There are no pockets or pen loops, just the cover with the rings riveted to the spine.

Measuring the pages they are precisely B6 in size (125 x 176mm) and punched in the usual Personal Filofax spacing too.

I took some of our existing insert files and decided to try them out in B6 size, scaling them to fit B6 (59% from A4 size)

Here are some normal Filofax Personal pages inserted on to the rings. Personal size is 95mm x 171mm as you can clearly see the size difference.

The photo below is a normal A5 insert the Enhanced Time Manager 4 lines per day version. Scaled to fit B6 when printing. No changes to the file at all. The line height might be a little tight for some people.  

I then took the equivalent Personal size file and modified it to fit the wider paper. To get the print out shown below. With only three lines per day, it improves the line height issue seen in the above A5 derived version.

I then tried out the A6 version. Again like the A5 version, no changes were required to the file itself. Just scale to fit B6 on printing it. This is very similar to the personal version in layout, but because no changes to the file are required it is much easier to use.

So from the above experiments, I would recommend using the A6 versions of our diary inserts if you are printing them on B6 size paper.

I will shortly do a post on creating and printing B6 inserts for those of you investigating this size. I think it holds a lot of promise in terms of a page size.

I also discovered one from Bettino a company from Vietnam. But ordering this might be a little complicated, unless you are a native speaker.

Here is a link to the Amazon UK one shown above.

B6 size ring bound organisers.

We are all familiar with Personal size organisers with their page size of 171mm x 95mm, it doesn't really match any of the ISO page sizes. It is a size of its own that has existed for about 100 years, so it is a standard in its own right really.

Deskfax organisers use paper that is B5 in size (250mm x 176mm) The B series of page sizes are a geometric mean of the A series page sizes, so for example B5 is between A4 and A5 in size. The page proportions are the same 1:1.4142 or the 1:√2.

As A5 is twice the size of A6, so B5 is twice the size of B6. Therefore B6 size paper is 176mm by 125mm.

It is a similar height to Personal size, but 30mm wider. This photograph shows the difference between A5, B6, A6, Personal size and Pocket size.

The B6 size has become very popular in the Travellers Notebook community. There are many covers made for the B6 size inserts and booklets. A few people have taken their personal size ring bound organisers, removed the rings and they will then take B6 size inserts.

What about B6 size ring bound organisers? So far I've not come across any from any of the 'regular' suppliers, but I would love you to prove me wrong!

However, there is the Van der Spek Custom range. Standard (personal size) can be specified with 13mm, 25mm or 30mm rings. All of these sizes can optionally be 'widened' in 1mm steps up to 30mm as an optional extra. 30 mm is the difference between Personal (95mm width) and B6 (125mm width).

So there is at least one supplier, are there others, please let us know in the comments please.

What about inserts? Well you will find plenty of downloads being sold on ETSY for Travellers Notebooks, but given that B6 is an ISO size, then the Philofaxy Diary Inserts can easily be scaled to print on B6 size paper.

When using the our A4 size inserts to print they need to be scaled using the following scaling factors:

• Printing on A5 paper you need to scale the print to 71%
• Printing on B5 size (Deskfax) paper the scale factor is 84% 
• Printing on B6 size paper the scale factor is 59%

Before closing this post I should also mention some other variations of Personal size that you will come across.

• The original version of the six ring Deskfax - 171mm tall by 180mm wide.
• Franklin Covey Compact - 171.5mm x 108mm (6.75 x 4.25 inches)
• Personal 'Wide' - 171mm x 121mm (6.75 x 4.75 inches) 
• HBxWA5 - 171mm x 148mm wide - Personal size high, by A5 width. 

The Personal Wide an 'invention' of some of the new ring bound organiser makers such as Foxy Fix and others, it is very close to B6 size, but not exactly B6.

Naturally you should observe the usual caution when buying organisers or inserts that are labelled as A6, B6 etc they are often regular Personal size and not A6 or B6 at all! 

Would you try out a B6 organiser if one was available at an affordable price?

I would like to thank the members of the Traveler's Notebook Forum group for their help in researching this post.