The Upholstery Forum

Hey all.
Very new to auto upholstery. Doing my first car, a 67 Austin Healey Sprite. It has very simple panels. No stiching, just 1/4 foam and vinyl wrapped over 3/16 hardboard.

I bought new black waterproof panel stock from albrights. But im running into a problem...
I have been gluing foam to the cards, then trimming the foam to the same size as the card. Then gluing the vinyl and cutting that a 1/2" bigger so as to wrap around the back and glue and staple. But, since im not also wrapping the foam around back, my 1/4" staples are poking thru the vinyl on the finished side!

ive been looking around online and i cannot find 1/8" leg staples, and barely any 3/16th.

I suppose I could wrap the foam around as well, but why do that? The original panels didnt and I'd rather not introduce the extra thickness to the door panels.

Or, am I just not getting it and you are supposed to aways wrap the full sandwich around back?

That's for explaining this to me...

What staple gun do you have? You may be limited in what you can get based on your gun.
Before buying a 71 series gun I couldn't find anything smaller than 1/4" for my manual dewalt gun. Now I have a pneumatic 71 series gun I have much better access to staples.

I use 1/4" (6mm) for pretty much everything, but go down to 5/32" (4mm) for door cards. My supplier also does an even smaller 3mm, but I've found 4mm is small enough for the door cards I work on.

Ok, ill look into the 71 series.
And do you have any thoughts about whether I need to wrap both the foam an vinyl around onto the back of a simple door card, or can i just wrap the vinyl back and have the foam stop at the door card edge?
Thanks for your help!
~martin

I usually trim the foam to the edge of the door card and just wrap the vinyl round.
I do a lot of VW upholstery and the clips that hold the door card on are a tight fit so I like to avoid having an extra bulk on the back of the door card.

I haven't seen 1/8" staples in a long time. I have switched to 5/32 and 3/16 staples for door panels. Just shoot the staples in at an angle. That will essentially shorten the depth of the staples.

I have a BeA 650A/16 staple gun and use Spotnails 71 Series 22GA 5/32" Part number 87002.5 or Spotnails 71 Series 22GA 1/8" part number 87002. These are 3/8" crown staples. If you go to the Spotnails web site both of these part numbers are listed and available. I just checked late last week on this.
Of course a 3/8 crown staple does not have the same holding power as a 1/2" crown staple but the simple solution is to put two staples right next to each other then skip you spacing between staples (groups in this case).
The BeA gun isn't cheap. I bought it on John's recommendations and to the best of what I know is the only gun around that shoots 5/32" or 1/8" staples.
Hope this info helps.

Yeah even the Bia states its not meant for 1/8" staples but I have shot thousands of 1/8" and 5/32 out of it and never any problem.

Salco has 1/8" leg staples. Mine were on back order for a few weeks, but will keep that 3/16' at an angle tip in my pocket.

Quick Amazon search: Series 71 1/8" leg.