In an attempt to overcome the problem of the swinging mechanism tearing the coat of paint every time the stapler was opened, I decided to take it apart. In removing the spring, I broke off the tiny little pin that holds it in place. It's too small to replace and it doesn't staple effectively without it. But y'know, it happens.
"it happens"!? I'll have you know the hopes and dreams of the entire internet were resting on that one, brittle pin. And this doesn't even take into account the social damage suffered by all these people being strung along, hanging on your every word, awaiting the splendor of the finished product.
I'm going to have to insist you go back in time and undo this.
You should've videotaped it. Then you could have added Samuel Barber's adagio from his string quartet and brought the world together via the mystical power of YouTube.
Instead, I bet you just threw it away and had a sammich. You bitch.
It's art; I don't see why it has to work. Finish it!
This. Plus it'll make an extremely effective paperweight.
Plus, Swinglines have great heft. In case you need something handy to throw when the government decides to raid your place and charge you with conspiracy to behave like an informed, responsible citizen.
I would have done that too if I had broken the bolt. I broke a tiny piece behind the bolt that held the spring in place. It was cast as part of the stapler, so it can't be re-attached or replaced feasibly.
My uncle is cleaning out his mom's basement. This is a stapler by the Speed Products Company, known before 1939 as the Parrot Speed Fastener Company, and after 1956 as Swingline.
It is therefore dated between 1939 and 1956. It works, but needed a thorough cleaning with degreaser.
Originally it had a cool art deco thing mounted on the top. That is gone so I replaced it with stuff laying around:
At first I tried affixing it with an adhesive, but it looked a little boring and not quite right. So I decided to use a chrome bolt and nut to introduce a little contrast, and also to make it easy to replace if I decide to change it later. I'm also going to make an alternative one that fits around the top rather than sitting on top of it.
If you can get a thicker lump of wood for the top, then you could affix it invisibly with a wood screw screwed up through the metal part into a blind hole in the wood. Obviously the wood needs to be thick enough for a short screw to grip into but with a hard wood that need only be 1/4 inch or thereabouts.
It looks like the rear hole of the two is difficult to access with a screwdriver from below so you can't easily fit a second retaining screw, but you could have an anti-rotation peg of some sort protruding from the wood that fits into it: the front screw would then hold the handle on while the rear peg would prevent it from rotating.
I didn't love the aesthetic when it was affixed invisibly initially; just a little bit boring. That particular screw is the first one I found that would work, but is subject to change.
I can't photograph it without taking the thing off, but there is a small bit of metal that sits in the rear hole to prevent rotation. It is a tiny screw screwed directly into the wood, with a diameter small enough to fit through the rear hole. Rotation isn't really an issue because I notched the existing wood such that it sits around the small raised metal bits. My options were limited here by the things that I had lying around the house.
The alternate one that I'm working on will be larger and completely cover all edges; I'm also thinking about a putting a bigass knob on there, or constructing a metal seating mechanism that I could attach to anything I wanted to use there, and changing the stapler according to my mood. My primary constraint is that I refuse to spend any money whatsoever on materials.