3 Hole Punch
September 30, 2010 3:04 PM   Subscribe

I am looking for a good quality, yet very lightweight three hole punch.

I am in classes that involve a huge number of printed out articles, hand outs, powerpoint slides, etc. I learned last quarter that just keeping them in the pockets of my binder to punch later will end with them lost, wrinkled, or out of order. I want a three hold punch that I can carry with me to use whenever I want.

Only thing is, I work, I go to school, I take the bus, I ride my bike, I carry my lunch and my textbooks and sometimes another pair of shoes and all sorts of things--I don't want a super-heavy thing weighing me down. I also don't want a flimsy one that I will need to replace in a few months.

Any product recommendations?
posted by Ideal Impulse to Shopping (7 answers total)
 
Can you just get a nice 1-hole puncher and punch 3 times? Assuming you carry a pre-punched piece of paper as a template...
posted by Seboshin at 3:10 PM on September 30, 2010


Best answer: I had one of those little ones that fits in your binder when I was a kid. I don't know what brand I had, but we got mine at a craft store rather than an office supply store. The crafting-specific ones tend to be a little sturdier than the ones intentionally designed for 5th graders. They don't punch many pages at a time, but they get the job done and are quite portable.
posted by phunniemee at 3:15 PM on September 30, 2010


In college I took care of this by dropping by the library when I had a bunch of things to punch. You might see if your library has a heavy-duty three-hole punch near the copy machines or by the reference librarian's desk.
posted by redfishbluefish at 3:15 PM on September 30, 2010


It's known as a binder hole punch or notebook hole punch. Of course, it won't punch more than a few pages at a time.
posted by bad grammar at 3:16 PM on September 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


Of the binder hole punches, I think I remember that the ones where the actual punch mechanism was plastic held up better than the ones that had a metal hinge embedded in plastic - eventually the metal detaches from the plastic and then you have to replace the thing.

And I never had good luck with a one-hole punch...if you punch in the slightest wrong position, things get messy and torn up when you try to put them in the binder. The three-hole ones automatically get things lined up correctly.
posted by needs more cowbell at 3:50 PM on September 30, 2010


Response by poster: I actually tried the one hole puncher this summer and it was too inconsistent and messy. And the library doesn't work because it's far enough away from the building where my classes are that I could miss my bus if I regularly went over there after class.

I'm debating buying one and leaving it somewhere central in the department, but I get the feeling it wouldn't last long.
posted by Ideal Impulse at 3:55 PM on September 30, 2010


Can you get some of those clear top-loading plastic sleeves (like these) to keep in your binder until you can get home and punch handouts? The plastic should keep them from getting crumpled our out of order--each handout could have its own sleeve or each group of handouts could go in one together.
posted by Aleen at 4:06 PM on September 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


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