Alright, I wanted to show off this insane thing I bought that scares me a little. This is also a usage guide and a review with a video on how it works below.

I named it Kronk the Kuchonker and it’s my A3 booklet maker / saddle stapler and creasing machine.

This thing has not been properly documented in any way so I’m doing that for you right here ♥

For starters – this has no official name or brand. A bunch of sellers are referring to it as an A3 booklet maker so that’s what I’ll call it here. It’s all over the random online sellers, from alibaba, ebay, amazon etc.

It weighs about 40 pounds. I paid 70$ shipping and 170$ for the unit – so around 250$ with tax and delivered. It’s also fairly big – dimensions below. Make sure you have a solid work surface to put this on and enough space if you are thinking of buying this thing.

Mine came with a bunch of oil on it where you put the pages. Grab some dawn and wipe it down before sticking paper on it if you do buy one – because it will ruin your pages if that oil gets on it.

What it does – and how to do it:

• It centers your paper – the metal pieces on either side of the black rollers slide around, they do not stay fixed.
• In theory you slap your zine papers onto it and against the wall closest to you (where the rollers come out – closest to the 50cm text above) for alignment top to bottom – then you use the metal sliders to center the pages horizontally – they move towards the center together.
• You have to use your hand to push the pages down into the bottom wall to get them flat in that direction.
• Next you slam the stapler arm down and it automatically places both staples in the exact center of the pages.
• The staplers slide around for different paper sizes with fixed notches for different sizes – letter being the smallest.
• Once your staples are in – you lift the handle backwards. At a certain point it trips a switch – which engages the black rollers turning using the chain drive inside.
• At the same time that switch turns the rollers on, the stapler lever actually lifts another little piece up in the exact center (where you just stapled) to force the pages into the rollers. It’s an interesting counter-lever action to push the pages up.
• The result is fast – the booklet pops out the top of the rollers and typically stays folded about 90 degrees. Not a hard flat fold – but better than trying to manually crease a stack of pages in the center by hand! This is incredibly odd the first few times you do it. Nothing automatically stops the rollers when the paper comes out and you are going to awkwardly try to grab it while they are still turning – it’s smarter to disengage the rollers before trying to touch anything but it’s not intuitive feeling.
• THIS SUCKER IS LOUD. That chain drive that engages is actually running ALL THE TIME unfortunately. I wish that chain only turned when it was actually needed but hey – it is what it is.
• This thing is CLUNKY. The mechanism to engage the rollers is odd – the way it shuts off if you move the lever is also odd. It takes practice – but it gets the staples and crease dead center.

PDF of the manual and Video to come soon!