For those that build cedar strip canoes and kayaks with staples.
Here is the staple puller you want.
Made by Bostitch. I bought mine on line from an office supply.
Jim

I use an old Church Key . I do blunt the point end a bit.

Thanks for the staple puller tip. I bought one to pull the staples on my current build and it worked fine but I still prefer a regular pair of pliers, that is if the staples are standing proud enough to get ahold of.

The puller worked great at getting under staples that were driven flush but wasn't as fast as the pliers when they were standing proud and I seemed to get get more broken off legs with the puller as opposed to the pliers for some reason. So I went around the hull and pulled out everything I could with the pliers and then used the staple puller for everything else.

I use the pliers two handed for extra pulling power and grab the staple with the tip. Then give it a sharp pull straight out (no leveraging against the hull). It's not a particularly fun job and by the time I get done my hands are sore but it's quite fast and anything to speed up the process of pulling staples is worth a little pain.

Alan

NW Canoe has some composite staples that you leave in and just sand off. I haven't tried them, but the idea of skipping the step entirely is supremely appealing to me. Here's a link: Composite Staples

I kinda liked pulling staples. My preferred tool was a 6 inch pair of curved long nose pliers (nose bent about 70°). When a staple head was buried I used a sharpened brad or tack puller to weasel it up a bit.

quote amhacker22: "NW Canoe has some composite staples that you leave in and just sand off. I haven't tried them, but the idea of skipping the step entirely is supremely appealing to me. Here's a link: Composite Staples


"

I tried them for half a build and switched back to regular staples.

The crown was wider which meant the legs of the staples were closer to the edges of the strip and had a tendency to split. Not helped by the fact they were thicker gauge than regular metal staples as well.

The metal staples seem to kind of squeeze their way through the wood fibers but the plastic staples seemed to blow a hole. When stapling strips to the form sometimes I'd notice the strip pull away from the form when the staple was driven. It was because there was so much blowout on the back side that debris was forced between the strip and form. This also resulted in a hole larger than the gauge of the staple leg so that it didn't hold tight in the wood. Wouldn't have been such a big issue if the staples were driven flush to help hold the strip tight but they were always left proud, letting the strip move in and out easily. Although I didn't like this it, admittedly, probably wasn't such a problem once that strip was surrounded and glued to its neighbors.

Too often one leg would break when driving the staple. Because they made such big holes and tended to split the strips trying to drive another staple on top of it started to get ugly in a hurry.

Even though I only used them for half the build it was, obviously, considerably hardy to beat the forms loose from the hull. I use particle board for my forms and rather than the composite staples shearing off it blew out the edges on a few of them, rendering those forms useless for future use. Probably wouldn't be an issue with plywood.

I wasn't particularly impressed but I also know that NW canoe wouldn't use them if they didn't think they worked well. One difference may have been the fact I was using strips just shy of 5/32". Maybe with full 1/4" strips the splitting and blowout would be less pronounced. I've also seen videos of NW canoe using a pneumatic gun to shoot composite brad nails to hold strips. This seems like a much better option compared to the composite staples and would eliminate many of the problems I had.

Maybe I'll give them a second chance with thicker strips. Might as well, I've already paid for the gun and staples.

Alan