It’s garden fence stapling season, which means it’s time for the annual stapler annoyance. There’s supposed to be a plastic tab angling under the right side of the latch, pressing against the bottom of the staple channel and forcing the triangular tab on the top out through a small opening. All that’s left is the stub:
It looks like it ought to be a great 3D printing project, but I came to my senses and snipped off a length of phosphor bronze spring stock, rolled it up, and positioned it inside the opening:
The latch slides into the staple channel until the pin on the side you can see above engages a hole in the channel. The spring looked like this on the way in:
And now it’s ready for action:
Works like a champ and took maybe 15 minutes, tops, to accomplish. Shame it took me a few decades to get around to fixing it, but I finally dropped the clipped-and-filed nail I’d been jamming between the latch and the channel one too many times…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 