It was my birthday recently and I’d asked for a new electric staple gun – the old one having died mid project.
I’d done my research and decide that an Einhell one seem to meet the criteria. It was German (I suspect made in China), came with a 2 year warranty and got very good reviews – albeit most of them being on Amazon.de. Disappointingly it didn’t use the staples/brads (nails) i’d already got for the old one but seemed to take Type 53 staples and Type 47 nails – little did I realise the problems this would cause.
My birthday arrived as did the staple gun. Excellent, it worked very well and I was able to complete the job I had been doing (felting a roof/cover for our wood store).
Then I thought i’d buy some more staples and nails to suppliment the meagre supply included with the stapler. (P.S. it came with a european plug – something not mentioned on the listing!!!)
Now that translated into a mamoth task. I fully expected to be able to find a conversion table which said that a Type 47 from Einhell was the same as 147 from Stanley etc etc.
No such thing. Tacwise publish a table but don’t include an Einhell. Bosche have an electric staple gun (cordless even) which takes Type 53/47 so I thought that a good start. Tacwise do Type 53 and some nails which fit the Bosche. The Bosch takes 15mm the Einhell 14mm so I thought I’d email support to ask if they were compatible. No reply.
Research suggests these are European sized staples. Einhell and Trotec both sell Type 47 nails from their .co.uk sites. Apart from being expensive (£4/£5 for 1000 staples/nails compared with the same price for 5000 from ebay) they also appear to be being delivered by helicopter from Europe as they all want £8/£9 delivery. I declined as 5000 nails and 5000 staples plus postage would cost nearly as much as a new staple gun with free staples!!!.
I turns out that the type 53 staples are relatively common and various 3rd parties do them for a reasonable price. In the end I include 5000 Fixman Type 53 staples in an Amazon order for <£4.
The type 47 nails were much harder. Annecdotal evidence reading various reviews and blogs (my other half helped with this also) suggested that 18g (18 gauge) nails would fit. These in fact are the most common size of nail and indeed some of the ones I already had – another European brand I think – Kinzo did in fact seem to work. I actually got the micrometer out beforehand and measured them up to convince myself they were within the technical specs laid out by Einhell for the size of nails it would take. We’re getting there maybe.
Still I wasn’t sure. I tried linking Type 47 and 18g in google searches in the hope that someone official (Bosch,Einhell,Stanley,Fixman,Tacwise etc) would acknowledge the compatibility.
Anyway I took a risk. They say use long staples for soft(er) wood and short ones for hardwood. The stapler came with 10mm ones so I really needed some up to the maximum of 14mm. Alas I couldn’t give Amazon any more money – for some reason they wanted me to buy three packs. In the end it was a car parts store on ebay who got my business.
I’ve been out and tried them (still nailing down that woodstore). No problem with MDF which I’m sure is technically a softwood, but I assure you if you’ve ever tried hammering pins into definitely feels like a hardwood. All good.