Staple tool for fencing

Taranaki inventor, Barry Davis, an engineer who owns an 8.09-hectare block of land in the Okoki Valley, near Urenui, has been getting valuable customer feedback from customers attending The National Fieldays over the last decade.

While his fencing tool failed to win an award five years ago, it was customer feedback which encouraged him to work on and improve his product.

It was a day out fencing with his brotherin-law on his sheep and beef station in Waikawau which inspired Barry to construct ‘‘Stapl-It,’’ an appliance which drove staples into wooden battens.

‘‘My wrists aren’t too good and I was out working on a wet, cold Taranaki day. At the end of the day I was pretty sore. I was working with my brother-in-law who suggested to me that someone should come up with something which was better than using a hammer.

‘‘The only problem when I first exhibited the product at the Fieldays, was that I hadn’t worked out at that stage how to angle the staples. People said that it was never going to work, so I took it home and put it in the back of the shed for a while.

‘‘One day when I was working, I was using a chain hoist and I saw the chain going up through the block with a cross cut in it. The light bulb went on, and I decided that if this could be done with the stapler, then I could fire in the staples by having a cross slot cut in the end.

‘‘When I invented the stapler to show people how it worked, I was using a set of pliers to take the staples out. People would actually get bored and would walk away because it was a slow process.

‘‘I went back to my shed having decided