Upholstery Staple Gun Kit, Manual, with T50-Type Staples and Remover

Most chair seat and cabinet door jobs end with a staple gun. It fixes soaked cane webbing to the back of a cabinet door frame, holds jute webbing and elastic webbing to the seat rails, and pulls seat fabric and dust cover fabric tight on a drop-in seat.

This kit is a manual heavy-duty staple gun: no battery, no cord, nothing to charge. It takes standard T50-type staples, so refills are easy to find. It comes with about 3,000 staples and a staple remover for the ones that go in wrong.

Getting staples to sit flush:

• Hold the gun square to the work, not tilted.
• Press the nose firmly against the wood before you squeeze. A staple that stands up usually means the gun lifted as it fired.
• If one stands proud in hard wood, tap it down with a mallet, or pull it and fire another beside it.

On each job:

• Cabinet doors: staple the soaked cane at the middle of each side first, then work out toward the corners, a staple every few inches.
• Webbing: fold the end over and set a staggered row of staples, so they do not all split the rail along one line of grain.
• Seat fabric: one staple in the middle of each side first, then work toward the corners, pulling evenly.
• Dust cover: last, across the underside of the seat, with the raw edge folded under.

Use the shortest staple that holds. It should go well into the wood without coming through the face of a door frame or the far side of a thin rail. T50-type staples are sold in several leg lengths, and 1/4 in staples suit cane on cabinet doors.

See the tool lists for adding cane to cabinet doors and for re-webbing and re-padding a chair seat.

The kit comes in one version, so the choice is the staple. Use the shortest leg that holds firmly. For cane on the back of a cabinet door frame, 1/4 in staples hold the cane without coming through the face. Folded webbing and several layers of fabric need a longer leg to reach the wood; very hard wood is easier with a shorter one. Fire a few test staples into a hidden spot on the frame before you start.

A manual gun suits a few chairs or doors at a time. If you staple all day, every day, a powered gun saves your hand; for re-webbing a seat or caning a pair of doors, this is all you need.