PowerShot Stapler
I picked up this stapler to attach some plastic to the supports in my attic for the purpose of reducing the amount of swearing I do every time I pull down the stairs to go up into the attic. You see, we have blow insulation in our attic so when you pull down the attic stairs a lot of insulation usually falls down and you have to vacuum it up. Being your typical lazy American, this infuriates me. I do have an air stapler (I really love pneumatic tools) but I couldn’t find staples that were as short as I really wanted for this project and I didn’t feel like lugging the air compressor up the stairs. Enough back-story, on to the review.
This stapler is a “modern” design in that it’s made such that you push against whatever you are stapling which in theory makes life easy for your frail white-collar-working-forearms as you don’t actually have to really squeeze very hard at all like you did with the “classic” staplers. In theory this sounds all well and good, in practice it’s not as great as you’d think. For one thing with a traditional squeeze stapler you can get lined up much more easily in tight spaces as you don’t have a lever to contend with, with the PowerShot it’s a bit more difficult to use in tight spaces. Also when you push on the stapler to activate it there is a tendency for it to rock from side to side unless you are pushing straight down, when you are stapling in an attic you are very rarely pushing straight down…. activate the swearing.
If the stapler isn’t perfectly lined up and flush against what you are stapling the staples don’t go in right and won’t sit flush, while this is true of most manual staplers the fact that the PowerShot is more difficult to get lined up makes this more noticeable and therefore more annoying. When I resorted to trying to simply squeeze the thing to send a staple into the wood I found that the tendency was to pull the front part where the staple comes out up off the wood which also resulted in shallow staples, I’ve never had this problem with the old fashioned manual staplers.
All in all I did finish the job I was doing with the stapler, although I think it took longer and I probably used more staples than I would have if I had used an air stapler or a traditional style manual stapler. I do suspect that if you were using this for more “craft” type projects it might not be as bad, as you would likely be working on a workbench or in some other somewhat more maneuverable setting. If I lost this, I don’t think I’d buy another one I’d likely go with one of the old-school models that not only work better but cost about 1/2 as much.
Tags: tools