Cheap lightbox advice needed

In the US, ring binders have three rings and three-hole punchers are expensive. In Germany, ring binders have either two or four rings. Two-hole punchers are cheap, but four-hole punchers are expensive. They probably aren't suitable for precision work. What have you got in Australia? You might be able to make a peg bar yourself with dowels, but you should definitely use a drill press. I don't think it's essential that the peg bar be fixed to the light box. Unless you can rotate it, I think it would make it much harder to draw. It is essential that the paper not slip when it's on the peg bar. If it does, you might as well not use it at all.

Laurence Finston

Expensive for ring binder punchers? You can pick one up at Office Max for $10. Or even better pick up a ream of prepunched 8 1/2 x 11 and save yourself some time and effort. I'm sure they have similar packages of prepunched paper in Australia office supply stores, and I imagine that a 3 hole puncher isn't too expensive.

Working on a pegged board will save you a lot of time and headaches. I've tried the alignment method (crosshairs and other registration marks) and it was just too cumbersome trying to keep those pages lined up, only to find that it had slipped at some point in the middle of drawing.

In Australia we most commonly have 2 hole punches, I will look into if and how much a 3 hole punch is available for here. That way I can order order some proper pegbars from the US if the holes match up. Gotta be careful with these things as I think whilst we use A4 office paper here you guys use "letterhead" or something right? So need to make sure they will go well together.

Otherwise, I have no problem making my own pegbars for our standard 2 hole punches.

Two holes would work just fine. 3 hole is standard in the US and why I mentioned it.

Personally, if I were making my own, I'd get the cheapest light box I could find and drill the holes myself. It may be completely adequate for your needs. If not, you have a spare box, and you aren't out a ton of money.

I'd recommend making your own pegbar out of some plex or wood dowels and taping it onto the lightbox. That way you can make a few mistakes without ruining the lightbox's surface, and if you ever need a straight lightbox, just untape the pegs and you're all set.

Get some thin flat stock for the bar and some pegs that are the same diameter as the holes your punch makes. Punch holes in some heavy paper or cardstock and use this as a template to set up your pegs.

Also, you don't need to use all three holes in a 3-hole punch configuration. The outside two will do just fine, and sometimes the third hole creates problems. Just punch your holes as far apart as possible; it creates more reliable registration.

Could I then just buy a plastic pegbar and attatch it easily to save costs? Do I really need an acme bar & punch? Does rigging up a pegbar with 1/4 inch dowel and office punches actually work ok?

I've made several inexpensive lightboxes. All using a standard three hole punch setup (saved a fortune on paper). The alignment isn't quite as precise as an acme/oxberry punch, but for my purposes, it worked just fine. Especially since I do my clean up work in the computer.

Recently I picked up an inexpensive ($30) craft lightbox that is working fine as a lightbox after drilling holes and using office paper. I've also made a larger one using a sheet of opal plexiglass with the same setup. That worked very well, too.

They may not be as good as the professional ones, but they will work (and a 3 hole punch or pre-punched paper is a LOT cheaper than the professional ones).