michael78651

11 Mar 2015
01:37:03pm

Now and then, when I comment on the album pages I use, I get questions about how I house the pages.

I use:

- Scott Specialty Pages
- Scott International Pages
- Steiner Album Pages

Positioning the pages in my albums is prioritized by the order above. The pages also are of three different sizes. The list above also coincidentally runs from largest size paper to smallest.

I house all the album pages in green specialty binders. I use the #4 (#5 actually) G&K binder. These hold plenty of pages and don't take up as much room as smaller-sized Scott specialty binders.

Now the question remains as to how do I get the pages into the binders? The green specialty binders are two-post. The posts are rectangular. The specialty pages are punched for the rectangular posts. No problem there. The International pages are punched two hole. The Steiner pages are printed by me and have no holes when they come off my printer.

For the International pages, it is relatively simple to modify the pages so that they fit on the rectangular posts. I take a hand punch for paper and expand the existing two round holes that are pre-punched. I do it in this manner where "O" is the pre-punched hole, and "X" are the punches I make. Note that the top of the page is to the left:

OXX________________________________________________________________XXXO

I can punch 5 or so pages at a time. Each "X" punch is about a 1/2 hole. The third punch on the bottom is made to avoid crimping the posts and permitting the pages a little bit of side movement. This helps avoid tearing the holes, which will require using a reinforcement strip to fix. Scott makes the plastic reinforcement strips for the rectangular holes.

For the Steiner pages, I took a blank Specialty page, and printed a blank Steiner page on thick paper. I centered the Steiner page over the Specialty page and punched a series of holes into the Steiner page. This made a template that I use to punch Steiner pages. The bottom edge of the template is shown below:



When I print some Steiner pages, I place the template over the pages and punch through the holes on the template. I can punch about 5 pages at a time.

One last thing that I do is I use plenty of the Scott filler strips. They are strips of cardstock that fit on the posts. I found that it is important to do this in order to keep the pages from sliding loosely on the binder posts. When the pages slide loosely, as you turn the pages, the holes (this includes the Specialty pages) tend to tear and the page will be loose in the binder until you apply a reinforcement strip to fix it. It's a little bit of preventative maintenance, and the pages do turn easier in the binders.

Easy to do, and it permits me to keep my country pages organized in Scott order (pages for non-Scott listed stamps are placed after the Scott-listed pages) and all together.

 
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Ningpo

12 Mar 2015
12:57:40am

re: Housing a Collection

Perhaps you could try looking for a hollow punch that leather belt makers use.

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