If you use a ring-bound planner, chances are you have searched for a planner hole punch and purchased at least one. I personally must confess that I have a total of 8 different models of hole punchers currently in my office — and this is not counting my disc-binding hole punchers or other specialty hole punchers. You can click here to see a few of them in a video I posted a few years back.

Through the test and trials, I have zeroed in on my favorite hole puncher for ring-bound planners: The Cinch by We are Memory Keepers (WRMK). The Cinch is was not designed as a planner hole puncher but instead it is for creating wire-bound notebooks. So why am I suggesting the Cinch? Here are the reasons why the Cinch has become my one-stop planner hole puncher:

1) The Cinch is Versatile. Because the Cinch has pegs (also known as “disengaging dies” in the world of binding machines), I can customize the hole punches based on the planner size, hole spacing, and number of holes I need to create punches that fit inside the many sizes and brands of ring-bound planners. I will be sharing a cheat sheet soon so you can quickly refer to it when punching your planner inserts. I know, I know. WRMK does already has a Planner Punch Board specifically created to offer customizable dies that can punch a variety of insert sizes. Additionally, WRMK also has additional dies that can create holes for coil binding and disc binding.

So then why am I not rooting for the Planner Punch Board that was designed just for planner hole punches? Because unlike the Cinch, the Planner Punch Board cannot handle punching many sheets of papers at a time. That leads to the next point:

2) The Cinch is a Heavy-Duty machine! Okay, so it’s not as heavy-duty as the industrial machines that drill holes into reams of papers in a single pass. But for office use, the Cinch is a work horse that has made the process of hole-punching more efficient. To date, I have punched around one million sheets of planner inserts using the Cinch. Other much smaller brands of 6-holes puncher that I have used in the past would end up breaking after a month punching all the inserts that my customers have ordered. When using the Cinch, I can punch within 5-minutes a 1.25” thick stack of sheets. Yeah, I’m the type of efficiency-conscious nerd who actually have timed myself punching inserts. The instructions on the Cinch cautions to not exceed 20 sheets of lightweight paper in a single punch. The typical copy paper is usually 20# text weight. Because I use 32# text weight which is thicker than the 20#, the maximum amount of sheets I punch at a time is 15 sheets. I have punched 20 sheets of the 32# papers, but it does require much force to push down on the handle, which can eventually break any dies if that much force is exerted. As for punching a sheet of 100# cardstock that is laminated with a 10-mil. laminating pouch, I have found that the Cinch can easily punch right through it with no issues. I’ve tried punching 100# cardstock laminated with 10-mil. with the Open Industrial 6-Hole Punch PU-462 that is quite popular in the planner community, and it has caused that hole puncher to break. Thinking that was just a faulty puncher, I tested again with a second Open Industrial hole puncher (I have several), and the dies became stuck making the puncher no longer usable. So for its strength and ability to handle more sheets per punch, the winner for a heavy-duty planner hole puncher is the Cinch.

3) The Cinch Creates Professional, Consistently Aligned Holes. My moment of satisfaction is when I cut a stack of papers and the edges align perfectly. Likewise, I get the same satisfaction after I punch a stack of inserts and peep through the holes to see that they all align beautifully. Because the Cinch has a sliding guide that measures where the paper stops, I know that the outcome of the hole punches will always be professional and not sloppy.

I do not know if We R Memory Keepers will continue to produce the Cinch. I was looking for a backup in 2018 and for months the Cinch that creates the circle holes (there is another version that creates square holes) was very hard to find in stores and online. But they must have produced more because I noticed they became more available after a while. I plan to get myself another one, just in case they stop making this awesome binding and hole-punching machine.