Wednesday, March 10, 2004
As an assistant to a legal assistant, I am developing a whole new body of expertise. My new knowledge centers on the different types of staplers and staple removers and when to use which one.
You mean your workspace only has one stapler and one staple remover? You are deprived!
For the every-day 2-5 page documents, we use the standard stapler like just about everyone has at their desk, a lightweight plastic-bodied one you can pick up and operate w/ one hand. And to remove the staple, one of the pincher/claw-like standard staple removers. But very little of my stapling and unstapling is of thin documents like that.
A more versatile stapler is a heavier metal-bodied desktop model which can do up to 25 pages easily. Same basic shape but heavier. A document that thick often won't yield to a standard claw staple remover, at least not w/o chewing up the top page. Instead I use one that looks more like some sort of probe or dental instrument, but w/ a wide flat tongue. To get a heavy staple out w/ that remover, you need a good wrist technique. Slip the tongue under the staple and do a pull-and-twist motion.
For documents thicker than 25 pages, we bring out the heavy artillery. At the far end of my workspace I have a lever-arm operated stapler that can probably do 150 pp. More if you flip the document over and do another staple from the reverse. In the workroom we have yet a fourth stapler, to handle docs which are thicker than 25 pp. but don't require something quite as big as the huge stapler. Of course these all require different size staples to refill them. I have 3 different sizes stored in my desk drawer.
When you've stapled a thick document w/ a very heavy-guage staple, there's only one staple remover to use. The one which looks like a pair of doggie nail-clippers. It pulls a heavy staple out cleanly, or at least to the point where you can then carefully pull the document off the staple.
The main reason you need to unstaple such a document is so you can hole-punch it and bind it in some way. And yes, we have different size and type hole-punches, too. Standard wimpy 3-hole punch. Medium-duty 3-hole punch. i wish we had a proper heavy-duty 3-hole punch, but we don't. Then there's the 2-hole punch. I use the 2-hole punch the most, and like it so much I bought one for home, along w/ a box of 2-prong fastener file folders.
You mean your workspace only has one stapler and one staple remover? You are deprived!
For the every-day 2-5 page documents, we use the standard stapler like just about everyone has at their desk, a lightweight plastic-bodied one you can pick up and operate w/ one hand. And to remove the staple, one of the pincher/claw-like standard staple removers. But very little of my stapling and unstapling is of thin documents like that.
A more versatile stapler is a heavier metal-bodied desktop model which can do up to 25 pages easily. Same basic shape but heavier. A document that thick often won't yield to a standard claw staple remover, at least not w/o chewing up the top page. Instead I use one that looks more like some sort of probe or dental instrument, but w/ a wide flat tongue. To get a heavy staple out w/ that remover, you need a good wrist technique. Slip the tongue under the staple and do a pull-and-twist motion.
For documents thicker than 25 pages, we bring out the heavy artillery. At the far end of my workspace I have a lever-arm operated stapler that can probably do 150 pp. More if you flip the document over and do another staple from the reverse. In the workroom we have yet a fourth stapler, to handle docs which are thicker than 25 pp. but don't require something quite as big as the huge stapler. Of course these all require different size staples to refill them. I have 3 different sizes stored in my desk drawer.
When you've stapled a thick document w/ a very heavy-guage staple, there's only one staple remover to use. The one which looks like a pair of doggie nail-clippers. It pulls a heavy staple out cleanly, or at least to the point where you can then carefully pull the document off the staple.
The main reason you need to unstaple such a document is so you can hole-punch it and bind it in some way. And yes, we have different size and type hole-punches, too. Standard wimpy 3-hole punch. Medium-duty 3-hole punch. i wish we had a proper heavy-duty 3-hole punch, but we don't. Then there's the 2-hole punch. I use the 2-hole punch the most, and like it so much I bought one for home, along w/ a box of 2-prong fastener file folders.
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