If you are doing a small number of documents

Who needs an expensive binding machine? If you
are doing a small number of documents, you can easily get away with
doing the binding by hand. Here are a few tips on how to do machine-less
binding.

1. Why Spiral Coil? The first thing you will have to decide when you are
doing your own machineless spiral coil binding is if spiral coil is
truly the way you want to go. Spiral coil has a lot of advantages, such
as the books you bind in this style can wrap around completely, which is
great for functionality. These types of books are also very durable,
utilizing as they do (in most cases) four holes per inch of paper, with a
spine that winds through all of the pages. This help to ensure that
pages won't tear from your documents, and if you add a laminated cover
and or pages, you are looking at a booklet that will stand the test of
time and that can be handled by a lot of people and stay together. This
is why you often see large and busy restaurants using the spiral coil
system for their menus.

2. What Type Of Coil? In general, you will have much better luck using
plastic coils rather than the metal types that you often see in school
notebooks. When you start looking around at different spines, you will
notice that there are a few different types out there. For one, there is
the standard plastic coil that wither can be inserted by hand or by a
machine. If you go this route, make note that you will be a lot more
successful if you purchase some crimping pliers to make sure that your
spine stays put. Winding the spine by hand is certainly doable, but if
you value your sanity, you don't want to find yourself hand-winding a
large number of books. GBC makes what is called the Proclick spine,
which can be found in several different colors and sizes, and
importantly, can be easily reopened and closed if you need to take pages
out and replace them. GBC also provides a system they call ZipBind,
which are fairly similar to ProClick in that they are also easily
editable. Last but not least, there is a company called Komtrak that
makes what they call the Inspiral Info-Bind that easily winds through
properly punched paper and features a plastic clip that goes in the end
of the coil binding spine and makes sure that the spine stays in place
and makes the booklet easily editable as well.

3. What Kind of Paper? If you are truly committed to machineless
binding, you will have to find paper that has already been punched in
the style of binding that you have chosen. If you are using a standard
size coil, you will want to order paper that had been punched in a 4:1
pitch ratio. This is what you will find the most readily available, and
you may even be able to find reams of this type of paper at your local
office supply store. Some of the other styles mentioned above use paper
that has been punched in different, sometimes proprietary styles. Just
make sure that your hole pattern matches the pine you are using, and the
rest is cake.