Materials on Hand:
*Loads of HP Premium 32#
*A 3-hole punch

Problem:
Need to get said HP paper bound in the most cost effective way possible.

Not A Solution
*City boy hole-punches that cost $55, and the specialized binders that go with them.
*Crappy 3-ring binders, whose rings come out of alignment within a month.

Potential Solutions
*A decent quality 3 ring binder, whose rings do not come out of alignment ever (barring nuclear holocaust, etc)
*Some arrangement of hole-punched paper and brads
*A reasonable and cost effective idea I haven't thought of


Thoughts?

Have you considered making them into hardback books?

You could do it youself, or have a copy shop do it. I know my University Copy Shop will bind a 8.5 x 11 hardbound book for $12 . (200 pages) Of course, if you need the pages to be removable, than a high quality binder is what I'd go for.

Copy shops bind with plastic combs, I am sure you have seen them. They are like metal coil bound notebooks but in plastic so wider. There are a lot of differnt sizes and if you are determined you can take pages out but you have to dismantle the whole thing to do so. And of course you would have to take it back to the shop to have the pages put back in the comb.
I think the most practical is to make pads out of them yourself with padding cement or silicon sealant. There is a tutorial on the site somewhere but its pretty common sense. Hey how bout sending some of that paper my way and Ill make a pad for you and one for me?

At Staples, I saw a selection of binders at Staples that claim to be better than the old school binders I remember.

Coils at places like Kinko's are better than combs, imo, because you can fold the notebook back on itself. There's also the Circa system from Levenger's which has a classy look. Rollabind offers much the same thing (I think Levenger licenses the idea) but their (Rollabind's) designs and disks aren't quite as refined (again, imo). There are also similar setups from Mindology (punch + disks) but they are slightly different from the Circa, and they seem not to fit each other's systems.

I just had this made up for my work at Staples for about $3 in 5 minutes.

I like that, Deacon. So if I were to walk into Staples with a bunch of loose, line-printed HP Premium, they could turn it into a similar notebook?

That's exactly what I did. The price includes plastic covers as well. I was very pleased with the result.

Another vote for Circa/Rollabind. It gives you the same sort of bindery as a coil (stable, you can fold the book flat) and the pages are removable. I print my pages on an HP laser printer and punch them on a portable punch (about 6 pages at a time).

In the OP, under "Not a Solution," the $55 City Boy hole punches I refer to are those required for the Circa/Rollabind systems.

There's no such thing as 3 ring binders with rings that don't come out of alignment ever. I've spent a lot of money doing real world research on that. Don't exist at any price up to about $20 at which point I gave up spending money.

Go get them spiral bound at a office/print shop. Cost effective and functional. I like the plastic spirals rather than the metal ones.