I want the truth, and I want it now.

[JaneNYC]

Okay, WHAT IS IT with the staples? 

Doc suggested a Youtube video to help me recover my dining room chairs.  In the vid, the guy is fastening a 3" wide strip of webbing to the chair.  To fasten just ONE END of the strip, he uses FIFTEEN STAPLES.   Pahpahpahpahpahpahpah.  Fold the fabric over and does it again, and one more just to make sure that the thing doesn't jog loose during the Second Coming.

Honored Upholsterers: It's a STAPLER, NOT 357 Magnum. (Although that WOULD make an interesting Clint Eastwood movie.)

I'll shall put myself to taking apart one chair every evening after work. I can handle that.

But I can hear the ghost of the White Furniture chairmaker laughing his @55 off at me...

j.

[gene]

Your topic and first line made me think that you were talking about the president who made sure Jimmy Carter was not the worst president we have ever had.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/11/staples-fires-back-at-obama-the-president-appears-not-to-have-all-the-facts/

A 357 Magnum - that's a champagne bottle, right?

We've talked about this issue before. If tacks were being used, there would be three or four tacks, the webbing folded over, and 3 more tacks.

Staples hold as good if not better than tacks, so why so many staples? I try to use as few as possible, but it's just so easy to staple away and give no concern for the poor schmuck who will need to pull out all those staples when the piece is reupholstered many moons down the road.

There's a long time upholsterer on youtube, I don't have his link, who has a few videos and a web site that shows how to upholster. He mentions in one of his videos that he knows he uses too many staples and he doesn't know why but he does but he still does.

Maybe staples are like Pringles: cheap, easy and fast to consume. Why eat only 5 Pringles when you can just as easily eat the entire can?

gene

[cajunpedaler]

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (somehow that just doesn't have the Jack Nicholson essence it was meant to have)

Sometimes in the shop, with your favorite air stapler, and a job is just rolling along....staples are cheap, you get some aggression therapy stapling the sh** out of whatever.  When I run out of staples, I usually say in a mock cowboy voice..."Hurry, load up Ma! The Indians are coming!!" With my stapler there is some satisfaction in throwing in a new rack of staples and slamming the slide closed and you're back at it.  I personally am a 38 caliber girl, myself.
Perry

[sofadoc]

Think of it like being in one of those old gangster movies.

If you only have ONE gun with 6 bullets, you only use 1 bullet to "off" someone. But if you have a Tommy Gun, you pump about 20-30 bullets into your adversary, even though 1 or 2 bullets would've done the job.

Same analogy with tacks vrs. staples. If you have filled your mouth full of tacks, and are installing them one-at-a-time, are you going to over-do it?............NO! BUT, if you have a rapid-fire air staple gun...........GO TO IT BABY!!


OK........here's the REAL truth.  Gene gets a kickback from the staple company. How do you think he pays for all those canine yoga sessions?

[JaneNYC]

I KNEW IT.
I KNEW IT.
I KNEW IT.
You guys view this thing like a semi-automatic!

On a similar note, do I need an Uffy Decorative Tacks Made Easy?

I don't even know what it is, but I'll bet nobody will $cr3w with me on the subway if I start carrying one...

j.

[mike802]

All kidding aside I have to admit it is easy to use to many staples, but with the obesity epidemic we have today you can never be to careful.  I tend to use more staples than is necessary to just hold the fabric onto the frame, because more are usually needed to hold the fabric on smoothly.  The extra staples are used to hold in puckers, dimples and such.  Not really related to webbing though.

[MinUph]

I've said many times and no-one understands but if an Upholsterer learned the trade spitting tacks we would be better off. All those staples are not needed to hold a piece of cloth to a piece of wood. If you rely on staples taking out pulls and draws your not Upholstering correctly. I don't mean to offend anyone but trying to teach is my way I guess.

[sofadoc]

I've said many times and no-one understands but if an Upholsterer learned the trade spitting tacks we would be better off. All those staples are not needed to hold a piece of cloth to a piece of wood. If you rely on staples taking out pulls and draws your not Upholstering correctly. I don't mean to offend anyone but trying to teach is my way I guess.

True.........but most of these pieces with excessive staples are done by factory workers that aren't really professional upholsterers. And shooting a few million extra staples is THEIR way of battling dimples and puckers.

If factories trained their workers to upholster like a skilled craftsman, then they'd have to start paying them like one. I think they'd rather spend the money on a few extra cases of staples.

[JaneNYC]

pulls and draws
[/quote]

I'm totally guessing here but is a "pull" a wrinkle that curves UP like a mountain,
and a "draw" a wrinkle that curves DOWN like a valley?

I wanna be the tack-spitting kind of chair fixer.

j.

[kodydog]

Funny thing about working in a factory. Two guys working side by side on the same style chair. One an old timer, pacing himself and working methodically the other an energetic newbie going 100 miles an hour and using twice as many staples. Guess who finished first.

[JaneNYC]

Guess who finished first.

Yes, but that's always the way: immersion, mindfulness, and concentration wins out because the speedster isn't really HERE doing the job: he's always 6 blocks up ahead.

And Speedy never gets the full feeling that he's finished: he's always hurrying to the next thing. 

When the craftsman is done, he can put each piece aside with satisfaction and a feeling of completion, pick up the next piece, and begin again. 

j.

[sofadoc]

This talk about over-stapling has reminded me of a guy that used to work for our family business when I was a kid.

In the 3+ years that he worked for us, I NEVER heard him pull the trigger only 1 time. He always fired at least 2 or 3 shots right next to each other. Usually without moving the gun even a micro-fraction of an inch.

We also hired a woman that had previously worked at a furniture factory. On the first day, she stapled the outside arm panels to the bottom of the sawhorses, instead of the bottom of the sofa frame. When her mistake was pointed out to her, she threw a screaming cuss-fit, and insisted that it wasn't her who did it.

We found out later that she had been fired from the factory for throwing fits every time that she screwed something up.

[crammage]

I've always been fascinated by the pieces with factory coverings where part of the piece is connected with staples but the other part uses tacks.  I figured they were transition pieces where the factory still had old timers that loved their tacks and then younger people using the new technology of staplers. 

Speaking of staples, we're in the middle of redoing a Sam Moore chair with matching ottoman.  Ottoman staples came out very easily, the chair, not so much.  I think every single staple broke no matter what I did.  I spent 3 hours tearing the thing apart, not to mention how many times I cut my hands on broken staples.  Glad the piece is almost done.   :)   Oh, and it's a plywood frame.  Oak plywood but still plywood. 

Clay

[Darren Henry]

you get some aggression therapy stapling the sh** out of whatever

The guy who trained me was famous for that. If he got frustrated or was working in an awkward spot he'd set the stapler on full auto and go nuts. I used to just LOVE tearing those parts down after he decided to re-do that section correctly.

I can also imagine the pressure the production line folks are under where they have only so many seconds to do their task and the next piece comes down the line. [Anybody remember the I love Lucy episode where the girls get a job boxing chocolates ] Firing a number of staples quickly FEELS like you are going faster I would suppose.

just ONE END of the strip, he uses FIFTEEN STAPLES.   Pahpahpahpahpahpahpah.  Fold the fabric over and does it again, and one more just to make sure that the thing doesn't jog loose during the Second Coming.

Personally- I use two rows of 5-6 staples. In 20 years I have yet to have one fall off.

[JuneC]

Somewhere around here i have a pic of a barstool - simple round - and I swear, each one had about 500 to 600 staples.  I think they grabbed a handful of cheap vinyl, twisted, and stapled the sh&$ out of it with a repeat-action stapler and each and every one was buried in the wood.  Anyhoo, marine work is different in that stainless staples are NOT cheap so you don't encounter this particular issue. 

Ok, where was I going. 

Ah, now I remember - stuff you see when tearing down.  Reverse engineering is one of the best ways to learn the techniques.  But the funniest thing I ever encountered was a tablecloth - lavender and orange blossoms - used on a listing pull inside a seat.  Funny as heck. 

June