Choosing and Buying Supplies

By far the best place I’ve found for laminating (and binding) supplies is laminator.com (or bindingmachine.com; they’re the same site, just two different ways to get there).  Not only are their prices better than I’ve seen anywhere else, for any two like packages of laminating pouches or binding combs, you get one free!

So how do you know what to buy?  I recommend 5mil laminating pouches.  The 3mil are a bit flimsy.  They’ll work fine if you’re laminating something to go in something, or to attach to something, but if you want it to be “freestanding,” you will probably want the 5mil.  (A standard sheet of copy paper laminated in a 3mil pouch feels about like a sheet of cardstock, weight-wise.)

Laminating Tips

• Fit the size of the pouch to the size of the job.  If you can afford to stock up on several sizes, do.  Then, if you have a half-sheet to laminate, you can use a 6×9″ pouch rather than a 9×11-1/2″.
• You can trim pouches.  There are two tricks to this.  One, make sure you trim it before you laminate it, or the trimmed-off portion won’t be usable.  Two, when you use the remaining piece, use a carrier so it doesn’t jam your machine.  (The pouches are made to go through sealed-side first so the edges won’t catch.)
• If you use a carrier and it doesn’t laminate “fully,” go ahead and pass the piece through the laminator again, without the pouch.  Once the edges have adhered to each other, they seem to not present a particular opportunity for jams, and the lamination process seems to work better without the carrier.  (You could also try using the carrier, but turning up the heat.)
• If you’re sending fairly small items through a full-page-sized laminator – index cards, for instance – you can pass two through at the same time, because there’s plenty of space.
• If you’re laminating a fairly thick item, sometimes the sides don’t adhere as fully as the ends.  If this happens, just pass the item through again – sideways.  (Obviously, this only works if the item is small enough to fit through sideways.)

Binding Tricks

• One great thing about comb bindings is that they can be opened back up.  Try taking advantage of this by creating books that can have pages added later.  For instance, make a cookbook for your daughter who’s learning to cook, and add a page each time she learns a new recipe.
• Also, you can fix storebought comb-bound books that are coming apart.