I am in the process of replacing some upholstery in the boat and found that the previous owner used non stainless staples last time.

Upon removing the heavily rusted staples a lot of them broke and are too small to remove with needle nose pliers.

I am going to run my grider over the area to knock the heads down on the remaining staple prongs in the high density plastic used to form the seat bases.

What grit disc will I need to accomplish this? I will be ususing a 3" angled grinder.

Thanks

First I would do whatever you can to get them out. The rust will soak back through into the new vinyl if they get wet. If you can't get them out, I would just use some 80 grit or so. I would paint over them with some rustoleum at least.

Griff, if I could get them out I would. I even tried to see if I could poke them out from the other side but the staples did not do all the way through.

The staples are so brittle...you pull on them and they break.

I will sand them down, and paint on some black rustoleum.

Well I did this this weekend and it worked. This was my first time to use a angled air grinder and it gave me some confidence with the tool since I will be usuing it soon to do some tabbing repairs.

I am going to put a second coat of rustoleum on this weekend.