I use veneer pins, just tap them in with a hammer. Low tech is good.

Is "veneer pin" British for what we Americans call a "finish nail?" Seems to be the same thing when I Google - a nail (of varying size) with a small head that's designed to be "set" below the surface of the wood so you can fill it with putty or whatever.

While I'm using the staple-less technique on the boat itself, I tried staples on the "test panel" I put together. They went in easily and quickly, and my impression is the shape of the staple is specifically designed for "holding" so they did a good job of that, but I found it difficult to remove them without marring the wood, and, of course, they leave a double hole.

I did a test with some long stainless steel thumb tacks, thinking they'd be easy to remove and would only leave a single hole, but in my quick experiment due to the tapered shape of the pin it didn't hold well enough to be useful. (I didn't really pursue it though)

Seems like the ideal fastener might be a "double-headed" nail - the kind where the inner head provides pressure holding the wood in place, but the outer head makes it easy to extract. I did a quick search but they don't seem to make them small enough to be useful for this application, though.