Bind It All FYI

I received a package in the mail today. It was the small coils for my Bind It All from Bonnie's Best. Have I mentioned lately how great her service is? I ordered these over the weekend. Love having them in my hands so quickly!

Here's my FYI. I don't have any pics yet. I was just playing, but I know that I'll be making some smaller projects and I wanted some of the smaller coils. I ordered some of the 1/4" coils. These are very small, but they could be perfect for some smaller items. Since there's no plastic template for 1/4", I decided to use the 5/16" and see how that worked. It was fine. The wire is thinner and softer, so I think it doesn't 'rebound' as much when the pressure is released. Here's the catch though. The pages won't lie flat when opened. The reason is because the holes are punched 3/16" from the edge, so the two edges, side by side, as they would be when the book is open, add up to 3/8". This is bigger than 1/4" and therefore the two open pages will overlap each other inside the coil.

I see a number of solutions for this. The easiest one would be to just not buy coils this small. The 3/8" would be the smallest to go with. I already have more of the 1/4" coils though, and I'd hate to waste them. So, here's my second solution--punch the holes closer to the edge by at least 1/16". I tried that. It worked fine. It's a bit of a hassle, but worth it so that I won't waste these other coils. There's probably an easier way, but I just added a piece of paper that was wider than my pages by 1/16" to the pages that I needed to punch and inserted that edge down into the punching slot, keeping the rest of the pages aligned at the top edge. Punch, and voila! The holes are closer to the edge.

Addendum: After giving this more thought, I've had a lightbulb moment. :-) My excuse is too many distractions due to kids! ;-) An easier way than what I mentioned would be to punch your pages as usual, then trim 1/16" to 1/8" off of that punched edge. DUH! Hopefully you have a paper trimmer that can handle this. It's those two edges that are inside the coil as you have the booklet open and lying flat that need to add up to 1/4" or less for the pages to turn correctly with this size coil--how you choose to get there is up to you.