26 November 2014

Van der Spek Standard with 30mm rings - Overview

It has been a busy year for Petra Van der Spek and her lovely family at their workshop in Puttershoek in The Netherlands.

Once we started talking to each other this year, all sorts of possibilities started to pop up and after some discussions between us, we put some polls on the Van der Spek Facebook group to gauge the level of interest in say '30 mm rings in Standard size'. Fortunately there was enough interest for Petra to go ahead and order in a supply of 30 mm rings from Krause and for her father to adapt the design templates of their organisers to suit the larger rings.

We published the announcement about the 30mm ring models back in July. This was 'back in the day' when you had to email in your order, and then a couple of weeks later Petra launched her 'Webshop' which has made ordering (and her workload!) a lot easier.

Whilst Janet and I were with Petra in October Petra asked me if I would be interested doing a review and long term test of a 30mm Standard (Personal), naturally I said yes! I've hardly stopped using the two organisers I reviewed earlier in the year. So we sat down and went through the various options, it was so nice to see a full size leather hide in the actual colour you were picking!

And a few weeks later, here is the result of our discussions. It is in nappa leather inside and outside, with 6218 (Blue) on the outside and 6204 (Grey) on the inside with contrasting stitching so the outside shows grey stitching and inside blue stitching. I quite like the effect it gives.


Internally it is the same layout as my other standard, with the exception that this one has a second pen loop on the inside front cover and ring protectors too.




Now to compare it to the 25 mm Standard size.  Although the 30mm on the right looks much bigger it's just trick of the angle that this was photographed. They are both the same height.


End on you can see the extra thickness of the 30 mm model


And when opened flat, and they do lay flat straight away you can see the extra overall width of the cover to allow for the larger rings. The pockets and slots are the same width.


And to finish off one more photo, because you know how much I love photographing these things!




The Standard size of Van der Spek which is the same page size as Filofax Personal and Gillo Medium, is now available in three ring sizes: 13mm, 25mm and now 30mm

You can see how they make the Standard and A5 organisers in our earlier posts.

You can see the full custom range of leathers available on the Van der Spek website. Please note that the prices are displayed exclusive of VAT and when you log in or after you create an account and log in with your shipping address the correct price and shipping cost will be displayed.

Thank you once again to Petra Van der Spek and the team at Puttershoek for this wonderful organiser.

2 comments:

  1. Nice post Steve! These binders are so beautiful! The company is delightful and it is WONDERFUL to see a company so engaged with its customers!
    I wonder what the interest in the standard size, but with 19mm or 20mm rings would be? I'm not on Facebook to post that question there, but maybe someone else could? I have found much planner peace with smaller rings and would LOVE a VdeS binder with 19 or 20mm rings. 13mm is just too teeny for me...

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  2. Well VDS certainly seems to be the popular new girl in school! They do indeed look beautiful but I'm afraid rather prohibitively expensive here in the Antipodes. Is this popularity because Van der Spek actually offer the old Filofax style and quality?

    It seems that Filofax offerings are quite thin on the ground recently. Are there any updates on their activities Steve? New binders? New refills? etc?

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