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*Soft* cover three ring binders


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I hope I’m using the right term. I mean when the binder itself is soft bendable plastic, not the traditional hard shell. I need to take apart some textbooks, three hole punch and insert, but I’m wondering if a soft cover one would work just as well, because weight is a bit of an issue. Do you use them? How much do you fit? I know I’ve seen them in the Japanese store where I get most supplies but I’m sure elsewhere too. 

If it’s going to be a pain I will stick with the orthodox Staples ones 🙂

Edited by madteaparty
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I'd just get them spiral bound over doing that. It'll be about the same cost. Maybe only marginally more.

If you need pages to come in and out... if it's the sort I'm thinking of, they're not ideal anyway because the rings are just... like they're sort of rigid and not as good at opening and closing. They're smaller and somehow they just don't do as well as the hardcover ones in my experience. And if you're not taking the pages out and putting them back routinely, then I'm back to the spiral binding being better.

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34 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I'd just get them spiral bound over doing that. It'll be about the same cost. Maybe only marginally more.

If you need pages to come in and out... if it's the sort I'm thinking of, they're not ideal anyway because the rings are just... like they're sort of rigid and not as good at opening and closing. They're smaller and somehow they just don't do as well as the hardcover ones in my experience. And if you're not taking the pages out and putting them back routinely, then I'm back to the spiral binding being better.

Oh, I didn’t think of this, which is funny bc I used to do this all time for work. . This would solve my problem, but who spiral binds these days?

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We've had things spiral bound at Staples before (with about 70% success rate - they ruined 2 books of mine by cutting the binding off crookedly, but since I had signed a release of liability, there wasn't much I could do). 

For smaller things, I PUFFY HEART LOVE my GBC Pro-Click . . . it's a spiral binding, but can be opened and closed to add / take out pages, many times. For larger things where I only need to carry around 2-3 chapters at a time, it dramatically reduces weight and improves portability. The holes are specialized (so I have the "other 8" chapters sitting on a shelf in the basement, awkwardly), but I've gotten a lot of use out of my machine over the years. This is the one I have, though I think I paid around $50-ish for it on sale. 

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Staples, Office Depot, UPS store, and the FedEx store all spiral bind. I've never tried to trust any of them to cut the binding off a book though.

I agree if you're going to do a ton of these over a period of multiple years, look at the pro-click and decide if it makes sense. Spiral binding is pretty cheap. I haven't regretted that I didn't get the pro-click back in the day. I think even if I'd gotten it, it would have taken many years for it to pay for itself and would have been more work for me. Another option is a ring binding system. Those are good if you want it to act a bit like a spiral binding but also take things in and out and reuse it from year to year. My planner is a ring binding system and I have a little hole punch for it. But it's another investment. And it's not as durable as proper spiral binding.

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