I've been doing a staple-less (my first) as well. It has been slow going, but I'm not sure how stapling would speed it up much. It seems that even with stapling you still have to use elastics and clamps to hold the strips together until the glue sets, not to mention all the scarfing and getting the ends to meet cleanly. If I were inclined to do more than two strips in a day, the glue from the first would be set by the time I finished with the first.

Anyways, I have generally been using the Rob Macks and Rod Tait instructions. L- and U-shaped blocks with a small dowel sitting in the cove to hold the strip to the forms and hot glue to make it permanent. In between the forms, though, I've done what is in the picture. I cut a bicycle tire into strips, which I wrap around the strips with a dowel rod sitting in the cove. This really clamps it down well and spreads the clamping along the length of it.