How to Coil Bind a Booklet

Coil binding is an attractive, durable way to bind together the pages of a book or other publication. Coil binding is particularly convenient in the case of books that are meant to be worked on such as memory books, because the coil binding allows the pages to lie flat. For the same reason, coil binding is the perfect binding solution for cookbooks. Coil binding is an excellent binding choice for small scale projects at schools or the office, because coil binding machines are small, lightweight, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive. For home office binding needs, coil binding is probably the best method available.

Binding materials using a coil binding punch machine is really quite easy. The manual coil punch machine consists of a base surface, where you will set your paper flat before punching. The actual punch mechanism is covered with a safety hood, and there is a large handled lever rising up from the safety hood. The coil punch machine will have a small moveable stopper on one end, intended to be used to hold your paper still while punching. Simply slide the side of the paper that you wish to punch underneath the safety hood until it stops. Hold the paper steady as you pull the lever all the way down until it stops. Slide your paper out, and you will see that one full length of the sheet is now fully punched.

Different coil punch machines have different punch ratios. The most popular, is 4:1, which simply means, that it will punch four holes to every one inch length of the paper. It is important that you know what punch ratio your machine uses, so that you order and use the correct size of plastic coils for your projects. In addition, different coil punch machines have varying punch capacities. What this means is that some machines can punch more sheets of paper at once than others. The more sheets your machine can punch at once, the faster your project can be completed.

When you have punched all of the sheets of paper that you need for your project, it will be time to insert the plastic coil. There are electric coil inserters available for purchase, however manually inserting the plastic coil is very simple, and actually quite a rapid process. You will likely notice on the base of your manual coil punch machine, an angled groove that runs the length of the base platform. If you lay the sheets of your project to line up along this groove, all you then need to do is insert the tip of the coil into the first of the punched holes, and continue to twist the coil by hand. You will find that the coil tip lines up perfectly with the subsequent holes, and the whole process takes a very short time.

Once the plastic coil has been inserted through the length of your booklet, use your coil pliers to trim, bend, and hook the coil tips around onto the edge coils.

Another useful aspect of coil binding is that the ends of the coil can later be unhooked, and the coil removed so that pages can either be added or removed from the publication. This makes coil binding projects durable, yet easily modified.