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I am posting this because the reviews for this punch on both Amazon and on craft-store sites are all either 5 stars or 1 star. I bought the thing with a 50% off coupon, and here was my experience. (They're sized based on the radius of curvature: I bought the Small size.)
First of all, I need to point out something very important: This hole punch was made to cut through UNlaminated paper or cardstock. Un. Laminated. As in, it was not designed or tested by Fiskars to cut through a layer of laminating plastic at all.
I mention this because I'm pretty sure it's the reason for every one-star review out there. Hell, I knew ahead of time that it probably wouldn't be able to handle laminate, and still bought it to punch through laminate anyway. I did so because I own their sewing scissors, and those things are sharp enough to split a single hair multiple times and STILL cut through heavy canvas and sheer poly-silks like butter. Fiskars does not fuck around when it comes to cutting through the things it expects you to cut with their products.
I also bought this punch because working freehand, I cannot cut a neatly-curved corner to save my life. I cannot. It always looks like a child did it. I figured that I should at least see if something worked to make my corner-cutting life easier. To cut corners at cutting rounded corners, if you will.
So here are all 4 possible scenarios for trying to punch neat corners in laminate, how often they happened in a few dozen test cases, and what the fallout was:
1. Cuts neatly all the way through the plastic. Despite what Negative Nancy and Complaining Carl will tell you, this happened like 70-80% of the time. A nice, neat, smooth corner, even though it wasn't meant to cut plastic.
2. Doesn't stick, but fails to cut all the way through. This was about 20% of the time. Fortunately, when the punch didn't cut through all the way, it always left a nice neat scoreline of that pretty rounded corner that I could easily follow with scissors. So even though I technically cut these corners with a pair of scissors, it looked WAY neater than when I tried to round off corners freehanded.
3. Sticks shut and also doesn't cut the plastic all the way through. Like both of the remaining cases fell into this category. I just opened the confetti catcher on the underside and took my X-acto knife (with the blade covered) and gave it a gentle nudge with the handle end of the knife. The punch popped right back open with very little pressure. A quick snip of the little scrap of leftover plastic on the corner I was trying to punch, and all was well.
4. Completely mangles the corner you're trying to punch so it looks like garbage and is unsalvageable. This never happened, at all. Not even once. And given my unfortunate experience with paper punches and those little mushroom-shaped Happy Planner holes, I was fully expecting a mangling to happen at least once. It's good to be wrong about something sometimes. :)
In summary: If you're only cutting through plain old paper and cardstock, ignore all the 1-star reviews because this thing WILL punch just fine. If you're cutting through laminated paper or cardstock, be aware that you may still have some extra work to do, but not much. The punch still saved me time overall, AND made my corners look way nicer than I could have ever done without it. For $6, that's outstanding.
First of all, I need to point out something very important: This hole punch was made to cut through UNlaminated paper or cardstock. Un. Laminated. As in, it was not designed or tested by Fiskars to cut through a layer of laminating plastic at all.
I mention this because I'm pretty sure it's the reason for every one-star review out there. Hell, I knew ahead of time that it probably wouldn't be able to handle laminate, and still bought it to punch through laminate anyway. I did so because I own their sewing scissors, and those things are sharp enough to split a single hair multiple times and STILL cut through heavy canvas and sheer poly-silks like butter. Fiskars does not fuck around when it comes to cutting through the things it expects you to cut with their products.
I also bought this punch because working freehand, I cannot cut a neatly-curved corner to save my life. I cannot. It always looks like a child did it. I figured that I should at least see if something worked to make my corner-cutting life easier. To cut corners at cutting rounded corners, if you will.
So here are all 4 possible scenarios for trying to punch neat corners in laminate, how often they happened in a few dozen test cases, and what the fallout was:
1. Cuts neatly all the way through the plastic. Despite what Negative Nancy and Complaining Carl will tell you, this happened like 70-80% of the time. A nice, neat, smooth corner, even though it wasn't meant to cut plastic.
2. Doesn't stick, but fails to cut all the way through. This was about 20% of the time. Fortunately, when the punch didn't cut through all the way, it always left a nice neat scoreline of that pretty rounded corner that I could easily follow with scissors. So even though I technically cut these corners with a pair of scissors, it looked WAY neater than when I tried to round off corners freehanded.
3. Sticks shut and also doesn't cut the plastic all the way through. Like both of the remaining cases fell into this category. I just opened the confetti catcher on the underside and took my X-acto knife (with the blade covered) and gave it a gentle nudge with the handle end of the knife. The punch popped right back open with very little pressure. A quick snip of the little scrap of leftover plastic on the corner I was trying to punch, and all was well.
4. Completely mangles the corner you're trying to punch so it looks like garbage and is unsalvageable. This never happened, at all. Not even once. And given my unfortunate experience with paper punches and those little mushroom-shaped Happy Planner holes, I was fully expecting a mangling to happen at least once. It's good to be wrong about something sometimes. :)
In summary: If you're only cutting through plain old paper and cardstock, ignore all the 1-star reviews because this thing WILL punch just fine. If you're cutting through laminated paper or cardstock, be aware that you may still have some extra work to do, but not much. The punch still saved me time overall, AND made my corners look way nicer than I could have ever done without it. For $6, that's outstanding.
