Ring Size and Capacity

The rings in your Filofax organiser do have a finite capacity. 

You are recommended to not over stuff your organiser, because the paper on the inside of the rings will start to push the rings open when you attempt to close your organiser. See this post for an explanation. 

As one of our readers recently commented, it is best that the front and back cover are parallel not diverging (wider at the outer edge than they are at the spine) 

Rings - The ring size of a Filofax organiser is the internal diameter in millimetres. 

Although the USA site converts this in to inches but not that accurately. 

The amount of paper only (no dividers has been tested with just Filofax plain white thin paper (70gsm) and the results are shown below just as an indication.

Ring Size	Organiser Size	Capacity (Sheets)
30 mm	A5, Personal Zip	330
25 mm	A5 Clasp	270
23 mm	Personal Clasp	250
19 mm	Pocket	200
15 mm	Compact	150
13 mm	Slimline, Mini	120
11 mm	Slimline, Mini	105

 You will find lots of other information about all aspects of Filofax Organisers in the book fILE of fACTS

Guest Post – Time of change by gmax

Thank you to Max for this guest post. 

I’m not one for undertaking changes lightly – my faithful Winchester 4CLF 7/8 BK had been in service for around 30 years, and has survived with only a few signs of wear.

Worn pen holder on 7/8” Winchester

Most of that time it’s been “over-stuffed”, making it rather hard to get pages in and out, and I realised towards the end of last year that I seldom took it out of the house any longer.

So, after wrestling mentally for a while, I decided to switch to a very similar 5/4” large ring model, figuring that the increased size would be less of a problem now that I didn’t carry it much out and about.

I’d bought a slightly used 5/4” one on eBay, and just had to repair the snap fastener cover.

Large 5/4” ring Winchester

My “over-stuffed” 7/8” Winchester with its 5/4” replacement

According to the catalogues, a 7/8” model will hold 200 leaves, while a 5/4” model will take 300.

Certainly the capacity is more suitable in my case, as you can see below.

Contents transferred to the larger model

I found it very hard to actually make the switch – it’s surprising how much loyalty an inanimate object can inspire! But I’m very happy now with the “new” model – so much easier to work with overall.

Even changing leaves at the very front or back is possible now

For reference, here’s a photo comparison including a ½” (120 leaf) model as well

Three Sizes of Winchester

And of course if you reduce the number of pages it will be easy to swap back to the smaller ring size organiser! 

Fitting bigger rings to a Gillio A5 Mia Cara

The Gillio Mia Cara in Medium (Personal) and A5 size come as standard with just 25 mm size rings. Now most people might be ok about that. However, considering the size of the organiser and it's outer jacket the rings on the A5 do look a little small. This of course might be due to me using Filofax A5's with 30mm rings or my Van der Spek with 35mm rings.

So is it possible to increase the size of the rings and what are the downsides to the larger rings. The simple answer is yes and the downsides are as follows:

• Heavier overall weight with the increased number of pages. 
• The tabs do stick out a bit more, but you will see that there is a way around that on the Mia Cara.  

So here is a standard A5 Mia Cara with 25mm rings with a standard set of inserts. The tabs are just flush with the edge of the organiser part, but well inside the edge when installed in the outer jacket. 

You will see from this photo looking down that with 25mm rings how much spare capacity there is, although the rings are more or less at their capacity in terms of holding the full set of inserts.

Ring Capacity

What else do you do on a New Years Day with the wind and rain coming down outside.... Well some Philofaxing that is for sure...

So I grabbed a 'few' from my collection for a ring size measure... just to be sure, then a few packs of 100 sheets of plain white Filofax paper and then try each size of rings with different numbers of sheets.

You will find the results in the FAQ Page under 'R' for 'Rings' with a 'Capacity' column added:

Ring Size	Organiser Size	Capacity (Sheets)
30 mm	A5, Personal Zip	340
25 mm	A5 Clasp	280
23 mm	Personal Clasp	250
19 mm	Pocket	200
15 mm	Compact	150
13 mm	Slimline, Mini	120
11 mm	Slimline, Mini	105

This is just paper only, no dividers or anything else, so in reality you might have to deduct 10-15 sheets depending on what else you have.

If the smaller ring size look out of proportion to the larger ones. It is because with the smaller rings the page offset is the same so they are harder to turn on the smaller size rings. As you get above 15mm the offset isn't so critical.

And the 25 and 30 mm ring size might be able to take slightly more than I have measured, but I've erred on the safe side of things.

Of course if use Filofax Cotton Cream Paper then it is thicker so you will have to reduce the number of sheets accordingly.

USA vs UK/European Ring Sizes

I'm often see people questioning the ring sizes of different Filofax personal organisers for sale on Filofax USA.  I sometimes end up 'throwing my toys out of my pram' in frustration that someone somewhere can't do the maths or math correctly to convert Metric millimetres in to old Imperial Inch fractions...

I've actually written to Filofax USA more than a few times pointing out the errors on their website.

So in a lazy afternoon moment I constructed a table to show how and why they get the measurements wrong:

Fraction			Imp	mm	mm	Filofax Ring Sizes
1	/	16	0.0625	1.5875	1.6
1	/	8	0.1250	3.1750	3.2
3	/	16	0.1875	4.7625	4.8
1	/	4	0.2500	6.3500	6.4
5	/	16	0.3125	7.9375	7.9
3	/	8	0.3750	9.5250	9.5
7	/	16	0.4375	11.1125	11.1	11 mm
1	/	2	0.5000	12.7000	12.7	13 mm
9	/	16	0.5625	14.2875	14.3
19	/	32	0.5938	15.0813	15.1	15 mm
5	/	8	0.6250	15.8750	15.9
11	/	16	0.6875	17.4625	17.5
3	/	4	0.7500	19.0500	19.1	19 mm
13	/	16	0.8125	20.6375	20.6
7	/	8	0.8750	22.2250	22.2
29	/	32	0.9063	23.0188	23.0	23 mm
15	/	16	0.9375	23.8125	23.8
63	/	64	0.9844	25.0031	25.0	25 mm
1	/	1	1.0000	25.4000	25.4
17	/	16	1.0625	26.9875	27.0
9	/	8	1.1250	28.5750	28.6
19	/	16	1.1875	30.1625	30.2	30 mm
10	/	8	1.2500	31.7500	31.8

So as you can see there is plenty of scope for who ever fills in the details in Imperial Factions of an Inch on which ever side of the Atlantic they happen to be to get it wrong...

Lets look at the standard size Personal ring size of 23 mm, you will often see this expressed as 7/8" or 15/16" neither of which is correct you have to go to 29/32nds of an inch to get reasonably close to 23 mm.  Similarly 25 mm rings are sometimes described as 15/16ths or 1 inch rather than 63/64ths... I think 1 inch is the accepted 'practice'

Because Filofax (generic) don't go below an 1/16th of an inch in their Imperial measurements you will see that they can easily over or under estimate a ring size.

I wonder when the USA will move to metric measurement.... Steve runs for cover!

6 rings?

I was pondering the other morning... as one does... why 6 rings in a Filofax? or the pattern of rings in a Filofax?

To just recap, the 3 rings in an A5 or Personal Filofax organiser are spaced by 19 mm or 3/4 inch with the gap between the sets of rings being set to 50 mm (2 inches) for Personal and 70 mm  (2.75 inches) for A5. With the Pocket the rings are equally spaced 19mm apart and the same with the Mini, but there is one less ring.

My first thought was why so many? So I've had a look around for clues in to the design of ring binders. Wikipedia gives us the history of the ring binder, but not the reasons behind the design.

I've consulted an expert and at first they were surprised at my question, I do come up with some odd questions at times!

The paper has to be held securely in place and in the A4 it is held at four points spread at 80mm intervals. That seems sound, but why 6 rings on a page that is about half the size of an A4 page?

The only sound reasoning I've come up with is that 90 years ago paper quality wasn't as good as it is now may be. So the paper was more prone to tearing so by spreading the strain on the paper over 6 rings they solved the problem.

It's worth remembering of course that the early Filofax organisers were also used a lot by the military, so there might have been some requirement to use the same hole spacing as used by them.

But if you know why a Filofax organiser has six rings apart from looking nice, be sure to add a comment. Now where's my coat.......

Ring sizes - Updated

Ring sizes... Filofax ring sizes that is, not wedding ring sizes.

As you know I recently bought the A5 Malden Filofax Organiser. In the paper catalogue it is shown as having 30 mm rings. Likewise it was shown on the website UK and DE as having 30 mm rings.

I thought perfect, but when I bought it at the shop I looked at the organiser and thought is that 30 mm? I should have compared it to a Finsbury A5 which I know has 30 mm rings.

Where do they measure the 30mm? Looking on the website they don't mention how the measurement is made.

So when I got back to France and looked at the Malden in detail compared to the Finsbury, I quickly realised that the ring size is in fact 25 mm not 30 mm as advertised.  The ring size measurement is in fact the internal diameter not the external diameter measurement.

Here is a Pocket Finsbury being measured with my measuring calipers, and it is 19mm as it should be. Remember I was an engineer so this sort thing is fairly natural to me!

When I first discovered the error with the Malden, I was naturally disappointed, so I emailed Filofax UK customer service to point out the errors on the UK and German sites and in the catalogue. I got a reply quite quickly thanking me for pointing out the errors on both websites and in the catalogue.

I heard tonight that the catalogues are being corrected by hand!  They have already amended the UK website. But when I checked the German site just now, they have removed the Malden A5 from the site completely! Sorry people blame me!!!

I still love the grey Malden so much I have no intention of returning it. I could have returned it for repair complaining that you fitted the wrong ring set... but I suspect that wouldn't have worked!

Our own price guide has been amended... and I warned Iris of Filomanic to alert German buyers as soon as this came to light.

Filofax UK have been very gracious in saying sorry about this and they are sending me a complementary 2012 diary insert for sending them the corrections, so I'm not too disappointed.

I will take my measuring callipers on future Filofax buying trips... me I trust no one!!!!!

Update: It seems my Malden along with other early A5 examples were fitted with 25mm rings instead of 30 mm rings. I have been promised a replacement soon...