Bostitch Long Throat Stapler Office Necessity By Joan Young on Dec 31, 2008 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

If you need to make folded booklets from 8.5 x 11 paper you have to have one of these staplers.

After years of pushing staples through booklet centers and crimping them over by hand I decided I'd had enough and went looking for one of these staplers. They had one that had been a demo, and gave me a deal on it, but they regularly sell for $31.99.

It takes regular staples, which is nice. It fills just like a regular stapler- just pull open the top. There is a stop block that slides, so you can set it for a particular depth and reproduce the staple location exactly. One side is ruled in inches and the other in centimeters. The stapler is marked to 12 inches, but you could get papers up to 13 inches in. Of course to exactly duplicate the distance up or down the spine of a booklet you would need to create some kind of jig... which could be as simple as a couple of tape marks on the table.

The plate is set to fold the staples in, but by loosening a thumb screw on the bottom you can reverse it to fold the staples out.

I've never had this stapler jam. It just works great. The only “problem” is that it is about 16 inches long overall, and is a little difficult to store.