Staple Product?

The Arrow® Powershot® stapler is one product to avoid if you do a lot of giclée or other canvas stretching. The picture above shows what happened to mine this afternoon after I hammered it to death. I had to do it because I was so furious. Why so mad? It was the third one in as many years that crapped out.


The Powershot® is more ergonomic than its predecessor, the trusty T-50 model. The one pictured above I've used on three continents for more than 30 years. However, because the handle of the Powershot® model is reversed it is easier use. With this model you push forward rather than backward which makes it much more comfortable and accurate. However, the Powershot® is a piece of junk that just can't stand up to professional use.

I have a short fuse when it comes to equipment or tools that turn out to be junk and I get revenge by hammering them to death. It is a way a venting my anger... anger with the manufacturer for fooling me into thinking they had a good product, and anger with myself for being fooled.

The hammering 'tradition' started back in 1975. I had bought an audiovisual programming machine from Audio Visual Laboratories. It was so fluky and frustrating that one evening when the product rep was visiting my studio I threw it out the window down three stories onto the concrete pavement below where it smashed into a million pieces. Fortunately he had a good sense of humor. We packed the pieces into a box and returned them to the manufacturer with a note explaining that the machine didn't seem to be working very well.

In my book, Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée, I recommend the Powershot® stapler but now rescind that recommendation.

I will henceforth use 'hammers' as a rating system for crappy gear that I write about in this blog. The more hammers, the crappier the product. Thus the Arrow® Powershot® has the dubious distinction of receiving the very first triple-hammer rating.



Power to the people!