Wife is refinishing our dining room furniture and she is asking if we have an “electric knife” in the crafts room for cutting the foam padding for the chairs.
I’d also be curious if we need a certain kind of staple gun to attach the new upholstery to the bottom of the seats. I have an old electric staple gun from home depot that we could use if that would work for this.
Thanks,
Chris ( & Tandy )
I wouldn’t use a paper stapler. The staples would get pulled out too easily. Plus, all the electric staplers I’ve seen staple when you put your stack of paper between the jaws. I doubt your chair seat will fit…
The projects I’ve DIY’d, I used staple guns that I got at hardware stores. It’s a bit intimidating to decide what staples you want to use (different widths, different lengths of the pointy arms, different degrees of heavy-duty-ness, etc). But it depends on thickness of the material that is being used, chair seat wood type and how thick a wad of the fabric might be as you gather it to go around a curve. Some wood is just soft enough that the staple bangs in like butter. Others may behave like you are trying to staple to a rock (crumpled staple, no joy) and sometimes, the wood just starts to splinter. But you’ll probably know if is that bad before you get to stapling.
I dunno whether hot knives are lurking, but assuming you’re not using foam the thickness of a mattress, you can probably just use a pair of utility scissors. (I.e. not scissors that cost $45/pair, but not dollar store scissors either.) the cut may be a little jagged, but the process of stretching fabric around and pulling it tight hides a multitude of foam-trimming sins.
I edited my original post. I meant to say that I have a staple gun, not a stapler. 
I will pass along the notes to the spousal unit. Thx
There are hot wire foam cutting tools you can get on Amazon for 30-40 dollarydoos that work great for cutting upholstery foam.
As to staplers, I’ve used air powered staplers to great effect. Would have to find the box of staples to tell you the length and size.
I have a hammer stapler or electric staple gun that I can loan you for a limited time.
Neither will cut foam…lol. You might watch garage sales.
We use an electric carving knife (because we happened to have one of those). It’s probably not as good as a hot foam knife but it’s adequate for limited usage.
I’m pro electric turkey knife myself.
Harbor freight sells beast hot knives for 20 bucks…I’ve gotten good results from em…they have a trigger so they don’t stay hot I generally either taped it down or shorted the switch cuz they take a second to heat up
I saw that there was a hot wire cutter in the creative arts room lockers. Are those usually locked? And if so, who could I talk to tonight to get into them?
Thx