Punches

There are a lot of different punches available now. I've reviewed and I own most of them! Your punch collection has to be in proportion to your organiser collection... no?

This post contains links to various punches on sale at Amazon UK and Amazon USA. There are also links to various posts on Philofaxy when they were featured/reviewed.

Filofax used to sell their own brand one size punches, but they only appear to stock the plastic ones now for A5 Clipbooks. However, I did find this multi-size one on Filofax Germany and also Filofax France.

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For A5, Personal, A6, Pocket and Mini, we recommend the following punches. Not identical to this particular one, but the one I have featured in this post.

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If you only want a punch for Personal, A6, Pocket and Mini with only occasional punching of A5 pages this punch is suitable. It was reviewed in detail in this post.  The older design was featured in this post.

Note to punch A5 you need to punch one set of three holes then the other three after turning the paper over. See this post for a demonstration on how to use it for A5.

This punch is also suitable for Mulberry A5 which uses the same hole spacing as Filofax Personal size, whilst their agenda size uses A6 spacing.

You will also find other stockists on this Rapesco website page.

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For Filofax Refillable Notebooks this punch will do all page sizes.

In UK this page will help you find a local stockist of Filofax products.

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For William Hannah disc bound planners this punch is very suitable.

This is the same as the Arc system from Staples. I imported mine from the USA because it worked out cheaper. To see the type of holes it punches, see the William Hannah review.

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This is a suitable punch for Deskfax B5 9 hole pages. A similar punch was reviewed here.

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If  you like your pages to have rounded corners, these punches are great for making a neat job of your page corners.  

In UK this page will assist you to find a local supplier of Fiskars products



If you want to get back to this post quickly we have placed the text and links on a special page you can find it at https://philofaxy.com/punch/.

Steve Morton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Paper Hole Punch - 100 years and still going strong!

The humble hole punch or perforating machine as it was originally called, hasn't changed that much in over 100 years. Well not in terms of the basic mechanical design that is.

Current models look something like this:

As you can see the original patent awarded to  J.C. Parker and C. T. Keet in 1918, the hole punch works in basically the same way as it does now.

John Parker of Philadelphia USA was the original person behind the Lefax brand. He sold subscriptions for engineering and other collections of inserts from 1910 onwards. I have some of these from the 1920's and 1950's.

Norman and Hill Ltd, a firm of London Printers started to import Lefax binders and inserts in 1921. By 1930 Grace Scurr, the secretary at Norman and Hill had come up with the name 'Filofax' standing for 'File of Facts'.

Lefax continued to trade as separate company until Filofax bought the company in 1992.

The scans are reproduced here for educational and research purposes only.

You will find some higher resolution scans of these pages here.

Thank you to Alan for originally supplying a copy of the patent file. 

Guest Post - Punching Filofax A5 paper with a Personal Filofax Punch - Lisa

Punching Filofax A5 paper with a Personal Filofax punch

• The A5 and Personal filofax binders have a different distance between the two sets of 3 rings. The punch can be used to punch A5 paper, but the increased distance must be compensated for.

Preparation

• So to use a personal punch you need to mark your punch with a label at a point 32 mm above or below the rings (for the top or bottom). 
• Remove the paper guide on the punch, as it will interfere with correct positioning.
• Align the paper guide with the top of the punch and position the clear plastic ruler of the A5 filofax along the edge of the punch. Mark the spot 7 cm below the top of the punch.
• An easy way to mark this is to use a gummed file folder label, that can be stuck to the bottom of the punch. 

Punching

• With the paper guide removed, insert the top portion of the paper from the bottom until it meets the line. Ensure that it is correctly aligned and punch the top three rings.
• Turn the paper over (rotate 180 deg vertically) and do the same thing to punch the bottom three rings.
• Check in Filo to make sure the rings are right. Repunch if necessary.
• A bundle of three booklet folded A4/Letter sheets (total 12 pages) works well. It does not seem to be necessary to tear the folded pages.

Thank you Lisa for your tips, I'm sure plenty of people will find this useful.

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.

Win A Rapesco Diary Punch and Support the Fight Against Breast Cancer.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Rapesco the company that make great paper punches are supporting The Pink Ribbon Foundation with a percentage of their sales on all Pink products being donated.

Philofaxy have been a long time supporter of cancer awareness charities so it is wonderful to help in what ever way we can to further that support.

You can win one of ten punches being made available by commenting on this post here on Philofaxy, please include your Twitter user name.

Please include your Twitter Username and follow: Pink Ribbon Foundation as well as Rapesco on Twitter and ten lucky winners will be selected at random by Rapesco by the end of October.

Thank you to Rapesco UK for their support.

Amazon USA	Amazon UK

Punching A5 sheets with the new Rapesco punch

You will no doubt remember the full review we did of the new Rapesco 6 hole punch a few weeks ago.

Our friends at Rapesco have now shared the video below to help you use their latest 6 hole punch when punching A5 pages.

It is two part process of punching first one set of three holes then flipping the pages over and doing the other three holes. The paper guide helps you set the paper at the correct place though to get the holes in the correct place.

Take a look at the video.


There is also a comprehensive instruction sheet as well for all sizes: 

You can download a pdf of this sheet here.

If you would like to win one of a limited number of punches being made available by Rapesco UK do one of the following:

• Show us a photograph or page  you would like to insert in to your organiser if you had a Rapesco diary punch. Use the hashtags #RapescoDiaryPunch to enter and follow @rapesco_ on Instagram.
• On Twitter Follow @rapesco on Twitter and retweet the link to this post from @philofaxy and use the hashtag: #RapescoDiaryPunch

You can purchase the new 6 hole punch on Amazon USA and Amazon UK see the links below:

Amazon USA



Amazon UK




Thank you to Rapesco for their help and support.

Terms and conditions of the Rapesco give-away:

1. Only one entry per person.
2. Only one prize per household, 
3. Last date for entries 31 December 2016 at 23:59 GMT has specified by the United Kingdom National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. 
4. Entry is open to anyone on planet earth.
5. The number of prizes available is 20, colours are as available at the time. 
6. Colour preferences can not be specified by the entrants.
7. Winning entries will be selected by a pseudo random generator more complex than Ernie the Premium Bond machine. 
8. Copyright of images remain those of the original owner of the photograph
9. The Judges decision is final.
10. No cash alternative is available.
11. No correspondence will be entered in to. 

Rapesco 6 hole organiser punch

Rapesco are about to release a redesigned 6 hole organiser punch and they kindly sent me a few samples to test out and evaluate.

The new Rapesco 6 hole punch in White, Candy Pink and Black 

The new model comes in five colours: Black, White, Silver, Powder Blue, Candy Pink.

Whilst the basic mechanics of the punch are similar to the old model there are several improvements over the old design. Just to remind you here are the two side by side.

The new model is much easier to set up as is has very clear size indicators on the sliding punch blocks.

There is now a slide out paper guide with stops for Personal, Timer 21 and A5 sizes. The old model didn't have this at all.

Paper Guides at A5, Timer21 and Personal settings

The upper lever is now made from metal as opposed to the older model plastic one. It also features a lock so you can press the lever down and lock it in the closed position to save space in your stationery cave! To unlock it you just press it down a little and slide the lock to the unlocked position.

Un-locked on the left and locked down on the right

The removable cover on the underneath side of the punch has also been redesigned. There is an easy to open flap, so you don't have to turn the punch over to empty it and this reduces the risk of the paper chads going everywhere! You can still remove it completely as well as before for periodic cleaning and maintenance of the punch. You can see the paper guide in more detail too.

The white rectangle on the left hand side is a small window, this has been provide so that you can put your name on a piece of card to personalise the punch.

The new punch is capable of punching the following sizes:

• A5 (by double punching, but with the aid of the paper guide it is now much easier to do)
• Agenda and A6 organisers
• Planner and Timer 21 organisers 
• Pocket and Timer 14 organisers
• Personal, Compact, Slimline and Timer 17 organisers
• Mini Organisers (but not Van der Spek Mini)

This covers Filofax, Van der Spek, Gillio, Quo Vadis, Mulberry, Collins and others that use the common sizes and spacings. All are detailed on a comprehensive instruction sheet which will soon be available on the Rapesco website. 

Undocumented in the instruction sheet, with a little bit of fine tuning of the paper guide it is also possible to punch Deskfax 9 hole pages too. Using a similar method to punching A5 except you set the punch to personal size and flip the page punching the middle three holes a second time. 

The packaging indicates that the punch can be used for up to 10 sheets of paper at once. The hole size is 5.5 mm.

Stocks of this new model will be appearing with all sellers as they replenish their stocks in the next couple of months.

Thank you to Rapseco for sending me the samples of their new up dated punch.


You can purchase the new 6 hole punch on Amazon USA and Amazon UK see the links below:

Amazon USA



Amazon UK

Updated Rapesco Adjustable Diary Punch 66-P

Even if you use pre-printed inserts or you print your own inserts there will always be a instance when you have a page of information or a magazine cutting or similar that you want to insert in to your organiser and you need a six hole punch.

There are a variety of punches on the market from Filofax own branded ones to several others. The most popular one I would say though is the Rapesco Adjustable Diary Punch.

This punch has two moveable punch blocks with three position settings for each block which you should move together.

The three settings allow you to punch:

• Personal - the two blocks at their widest setting
• A6/Mulberry - the two blocks at their middle setting
• Pocket - The two blocks pushed together at their narrowest setting

The punch has a capacity for up to 8 sheets of paper, although I tend to limit mine to about 4-5 sheets at a time. The punch is well made with a solid metal base and a comfortable plastic hinged lever that you press down on to punch the pages. 

Over the years we have all devised ways of using this punch to punch A5 pages which require a double punch operation. People have done videos and created templates on how to align the A5 page to get the two sets of three holes in the right location.

I think Rapesco have been paying attention, because they contacted me recently with news about an update to our favourite punch. They have added an additional alignment mark on the base so you can line up your A5 sheets and punch them correctly every time. The updated version also came with a useful instruction sheet.

The updated version of the punch is now available at the same price as before. Stocks will be appearing with all sellers as they replenish their stocks.

You can win one of twenty of these new punches by following Rapesco on Twitter include your Twitter Username in a comment here.  Alternatively please share this post from the Philofaxy page on Facebook and like the Rapseco page on Facebook.

Thank you to Rapseco for sending me a sample of their up dated punch.

A paper punch suitable for Deskfax size Filofax organisers

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in DeskFax organisers, whilst they are no longer in production, their size is quite preferable for some people, slightly bigger than A5, but not as huge as an A4 when fully open.

There are plenty of examples popping up on Ebay that people have successfully bid for and Karine set up a Facebook group to bring interested parties together.

Inserts are still available from Filofax although a little limited in range. Philofaxy inserts work if you scale them down to 84% of the original.

Deskfax uses B5 size paper (176 x 250mm) which is quite hard to come by, but a lot of people have been buying Letter size or A4 size paper in 500 sheet packs and getting it cut to size by Staples or Office Depot or similar outlets.

That left just one thing from the jigsaw puzzle to solve.... a paper punch that can punch Deskfax paper. It is possible to do using existing punches such as the KW Trio and I created a video to show how to set it up to do Deskfax in a double punching arrangement.

However, a trawl of the Internet produced a Multi Punch sold through Filofax Germany that will punch Deskfax as well as other Filofax sizes, but it wasn't cheap. So we continued our search...

We then came across an adjustable punch sold with 6 punch dies and initially set up for Filofax A5, but it was capable of all sizes up to A4, this looked promising. An enquiry with the company selling the punch revealed they also sell spare punch dies in packets of 2. So I ordered a punch and two packs of punch dies. This would give me 10 in all, so a spare one. It arrived whilst I was in UK so I've not had a chance to set it up until now.

Now as I have numerous other punches for A4, A5, Personal etc size Filofax organisers I intended to set this one up and dedicate it to Deskfax size, I suspect other Deskfax owners would do the same. Once set up you would have a reliable means of punches new pages without a lot of setting up each time.

Fitting the additional punch dies is a little bit fiddly, but not too difficult to do with a small pair of needle nose pliers.

So let us look at the punch in detail and I will explain what you get etc.

So this is the box, nothing outstanding here really, it does include some information about setting it up for A5 naturally. There is a sheet of instructions as well.

This is the punch itself and the eagle eyed amongst you will spot that I've set it up for 9 holes already!

Turn it around and you will see the nine punches.

The punches are spaced 19 <-> 19 <-> 50 <-> 19 <-> 19 <-> 50 <-> 19 <-> 19mm for Deskfax.

To set the spacing correctly I installed the central punch first and then measured the spacing accurately by lining the edge of adjacent punches to same edge with a ruler. I then checked the setting my inserting a sheet of pre-punched Deskfax paper into the punch and look through the punched holes to check the alignment.

Remove the plastic paper chad catcher and this reveals the bottom of the punch.

Now there is a small modification required, so zooming in on the middle three punches. The centre one has its own hole in the base for the chads to escape through. But if you look at the left hand one you will notice that the exit hole is slightly obscured. This is how the punch came from the suppliers.

This picture does also show the right hand one in the group not obscured, after removing the punch block I filed out the slot with a round metal file to allow for clearance for the paper chads to exit the base of the punch block unheeded, it took me a few minutes to do this but it is worthwhile doing in the long term. I will do the left hand one now I've photographed the 'as supplied' and 'as modified' pictures, but I wanted you to see how it arrives.

These are the removable punch dies, the knurled and slotted screw on the right in the picture below holds it at the right point on the punch. As you can see the punch has capacity for about 5 sheets of paper, depending on the thickness of paper of course.

With 9 punch dies to press down on you really need to eat your Weetabix in the morning if you are going to use this set up, but I guess it would be the same for any 9 hole punch. I've found that it is best to use the punch on a good solid surface. The punch remains where you place it and you can use one hand to steady the paper and the other to press the lever down.

Overall I'm pleased we have found an economical and reasonably available solution for Deskfax users.

The links below will take you to the punch and the additional punch dies which come in packs of 2 so you will need to order two packs.

Filofax 4 Ring Pocket Organisers

The Filofax Pocket organisers we see today are all 6 ring organisers, but at one time they used to be only 4 rings. The change over happened sometime in the 1990's, there was a bit of a consumer outcry at the time, which included the Filofax MD at the time being asked to appear a consumer programme to be interviewed by Anne Robinson, pity the thought... But a compromise was reached and Filofax produce inserts that fit both 4 and 6 ring pockets still to this day.

So how are they different? Read on..

So first here is the current 6 ring page with the rings shown in red.

Note that the holes in the paper are slotted for holes 1, 2, 5 and 6. Each ring is spaced 19mm or three quarters of an inch from the adjacent one.

Now look at the same sheet of paper when used in a 4 hole Pocket.

Notice how the rings have shifted to the bottom of the slots. The rings are still 19 mm from their immediate adjacent neighbours, but rings 2 and 3 are 51 mm or 2 inches apart...

Now the clever ones amongst you will say ah... that sounds familiar. Yes it is, because it is the same as Personal ring spacing.

So the slotted Pocket paper will slot directly in to Personal 6 ring binders in the middle.

If it's not slotted a modern 6 hole pocket page will not fit in 4 ring Pocket without punching new holes or 6 ring Personal or A5 without folding or adding another hole. Where as the 4 hole paper or slotted 6 holes will fit in to personal or A5 organisers.

So if you buy a 4 ring Pocket, you also need a Personal size punch because the hole spacing will be correct when the paper is put in the centre of the punch and just the middle punches are used to make the holes.

NOTE: As from January 2015 Filofax no longer sell slotted inserts that will fit the 4 ring organisers. Although you might still find stocks of slotted inserts in local shops.

Filofax Punches

There are quite a few different of paper punches on the market for punching pages to fit in to your Filofax, I have done a few posts about these before. In this post we will look in closer detail at 3 or 4 of the ones I own.

Just before Christmas I received a KW Trio punch from Holland, this punch is adjustable with settings for Filofax A5, Personal, Pocket/Mini, it also has an additional setting which is suitable for Mulberry Agenda organisers.

For the technically minded the KW Trio 9170 punch has two sets of 3 punches spaced at 19mm spacing with the central spacing being adjustable to 70, 51, 38 and 19mm spacings or anything in between with careful measurements!

Not clearly visible in the photos but the punch has markings for the different page sizes on the front edge of the lever to help you align them centrally in the punch, there is also a pull out paper guide for most of the common paper sizes.

Set to A5 spacing, the two sets of punch blocks slide to their outer most settings.

With the plastic base removed you can see the punch blocks slid to their A5 settings, the other holes above the punches are the detents for Personal, Mulberry and Pocket/Mini spacings..

The punch blocks are now shown at their narrowest setting, which is suitable for Filofax Pocket and Mini hole spacings. Mini is the same hole spacing as Pocket (19mm) but only 5 rings instead of 6.

Again with the base removed you can see the punch blocks set to Pocket settings.

This punch has 5 mm punch dies which is the standard size for most hole punches on the market.

This punch is available from a couple of on-line sources,(Othwl.nl and Hummelman) the shipping though does increase the cost but the overall cost is still very reasonable for a punch that will most probably suit all of your Filofax organiser requirements. 

The KW Trio is also branded as the Rakuten PU - 462 and due to the cost of shipping to say the USA, it is cheaper to buy this version rather than the KW Trio version.


The Rapseco Diary hole punch which has featured before can be adjusted to punch pages for Personal, Pocket/Mini and Mulberry Agenda. It's slightly smaller in overall size to the KW Trio, but it is of similar design with moveable punch blocks. Again the punch dies are 5mm in diameter. Like the KW Trio it has an easy to remove plastic base for emptying out the paper 'chads'


The two three punch blocks have like the KW Trio equal 19 mm spacing with central spacing adjustable to 51, 38 and 19 mm spacing.

Again the two sets of punch blocks slide in channels set in to the base of the punch. In the photo below they are at their outer most setting set to punch Personal hole spacing. 

And with the two punch blocks pushed together they are set to Pocket/Mini spacing. 

With the plastic base remove you can see the workings of the punches and again the detents for other spacings (Personal, Mulberry, Pocket/Mini)

If you have no requirement to punch pages for an A5 Filofax then this punch is ideal.

The Rapseco punch is available via Amazon as well as other sources.



I also have a Filofax A5 punch and a Filofax Pocket Punch, these are almost identical in construction and operation. They are of fixed spacing unlike the two above.

First the Filofax A5 punch. The punch is solidly made out of aluminium with plastic end caps and steel 5mm punch dies.

Viewed from behind, you can see the punch dies and two springs that acts on the punch lever.

As you can see the Filofax Pocket is nearly identical in construction.

As you can see front and back they look almost the same as the A5 version. The main difference is that the Pocket size is fitted with 3 mm punch dies, the rings on Pocket and Minis are slightly thinner.

To empty the Filofax punches of paper chads you have to first remove the plastic end cap off the end indicated by the arrow on the base. 

Then normally using a pair of small pliers slide out the base plate, being careful to not spill the contents everywhere!

And here you can see it disassembled, this is the pocket Filofax punch. 

One of the common complaints about the Filofax own brand punches is how hard they are to use.

The picture below will give you a bit of a clue as to why this is so.... as you can see the KW trio on the left has a far bigger lever to operate and push down on compared to the two Filofax punches on the right, which as you can see are the same size, just different overall lengths for their respective paper sizes.

It's also worth pointing out that any of these four punches will punch holes for the defunct M2 organisers, as they have only 3 rings of 19mm ring spacing.

This post The Great Organiser Hole Spacing Conspiracy will help you with the multitude of hole-spacings there are for different makes of ring bound organisers.



I also came across this adjustable punch on Amazon UK. I have not tested it so I can't vouch for its quality etc. The adjustment is by moving the individual punch dies so it will be a bit more involved to adjust the punch when changing paper sizes.