Reducing Your Waste Footprint Nontraditional Fasteners Save Money, Lumber

As the technical director, I have always tried to reuse materials when possible and recycle any material that I could. With the average cost of our lumber doubling during the pandemic, we looked at the use of several composite and nontraditional fasteners – including composite staples, composite “common” nails, and scrails –as a way to increase our ability to reuse lumber and save money.

Composite staples for facing, attaching turf

While looking for an alternative to the narrow crown staples we normally use to install our facing (typically ¼" imported birch plywood), I purchased an Omer 82P composite stapler and SH/05-55 model composite staples from Raptor Nails. I wasn’t sure if the staples would penetrate the birch plywood, but knowing that we would find a use for the staplers even if they did not work with the ¼" birch, we decided to invest in them.

The result of our experiment? The composite staples work beautifully. They perform best with the crown parallel to the interior grain, because the outer veneer on the birch ply is paper thin. We also found that you need to take care when attaching these to 1x4 frames since the crown on the composite staples is ½" wide, leaving little

6 Southern Theatre x Winter 2023

ith a growing awareness of the environmental impact that typically results from creating theatre, the artists at the University of Memphis Department of Theatre and Dance have made strides in improved sustainability in recent years. Examples of these efforts include electronic documentation for stage management, support from the University’s Green Fee grants to upgrade our house lighting to LED fixtures, and costume design graduate students creating near- zero waste costume designs.Composite staples were used to attach fake turf to homosote for a production of The Wolves at the University of Memphis in February 2022.

room for error. The crowns of the staples occasionally protrude a little bit, but after the scenic artists finish, they are not visible.

We do still glue the birch facing to the frame, as I don’t trust any wall to remain structural without glue. When the facing is removed for reuse, the glue causes the thin veneer to delaminate. With the type of birch ply that we use, only the outer layer delaminates and remains on the 1x4 frame. This allows us to reuse the sheets several times as long as the “ugly” side always faces the frame. We considered this solution successful and purchased a second 82P stapler.

We also used our composite staples to attach fake turf to homosote for our production of The Wolves. My hope was that these would hold well for the action of the play but make it much easier to pull up the turf when it came time to strike. This proved to be true. As a bonus, the composite staples are far less likely to cause an injury if they back out during a show. Over the run of the show, none of the staples pulled free. Composite ‘common’ nails for flat frames

Drywall screws are the most common fastener in theatre construction. However, I have found they aren’t ideal for flat frames because they often cause the wood to split and are more time-consuming to attach than pneumatic fasteners.

I previously tested the use of composite “finish” nails in place of drywall screws in the construction of flat frames, but found they were too brittle to be trusted. However, I recently tried a different product –composite “common” nails – which are stronger and less likely to shear than composite “finish” nails. These are applied with a coil nailer. We are now incorporating these into our builds to further help in recovering materials from our flat frames.

Scrails for plywood decking

Another fastener that helps us reuse more wood and maintain the speed of pneumatic construction are scrails, made by Fasco. They can be installed with a nail gun and removed, like a screw, with a drill or driver. We get the speed of installing with a nailer and the recycling convenience of removing them like a screw.