2/28/2008
10:43:07 PM 

Here is a hint,--if the carpet is stiff with fillers and the installer or helper tucks with a stair tool, what do you see happening? Maybe you should watch sometime.

How many of you use a stair tool to tuck and how many use a trimmer or something else?

2/29/2008
8:38:24 AM 

I say those entities above don't know, but it's probably because no one ever wrote about the good things in kicking carpet. hahahahahahaha, I guess no one ever considered it as something that made you stronger, made you feel everything working under your hand and transmitted all through-out your body and taught you thru those things, what to do next and where to do it, within the confines of each job. Yes, there were times when I kicked 300 yards in a day--hotel rooms, that I'd be quite sore until the next day, after I started kicking again and my hands would swell some each nite that work was excessive, but there are some good things to say for feeling that strong and that healthy. I wish I had just half of that now. Back then, carpet was very soft by comparison and your knife blades would actually make a singing noise, vs the tourtured shredding of metal on stone, encased in our textiles today. With stiff carpet and watching some installers, the use stair tools in some cases, to force the material down into the gulley, but as I have stood back and watched them, I saw how the stiff carpet would get forced into the gulley, but it would also get pushed-up off the strip and as the stretch really wasn't much and the plastic had stretched, the loss of the stretch was small and it seems un-noticable to them, even though the carpet would pucker just a bit above the strip. From one guy I worked with, he would sometimes pound his stair tool with a hammer, so he could use his razor knife to cut the material way down at the bottom of the gulley--on berber carpets. While I could see the smarts in that, I had to tell him that sometimes, he was losing his stretch---when done wrong. Yes, that means there is a right way to force the carpet into the gulley and not lose the stretch, but the stretch has to be enough and the attack angle must be right as well. He would just bring the stair tool in from an upright position and bang straight down. That is the wrong way to do it. You should make the angle of attack, at an angle, so that the force goes from front to wall and preferrably just across the top of the strip, aimed at where the wall meets the floor. This is such a good way to deal with berber, while cutting in the gulley, with the rows or in the length, but using it across the material is good too. It makes for a clean looking trim job and as some of you know when using a trimmer, no matter how sharp for the first several feet, the blade dulls very fast and starts to pull the material as it is forced thru the trash. There is another way that the helpers or mechanics lose the stretch and that's with the trimmer. With such stiff carpet, if the person doing the trimming,--trims the carpet just a tiny bit too long, he then must force the excess down into the gulley and this can cause the carpet to be forced off the pins and lose the little stretch. With all the things going on today, carpet must have an equal and moderate stretch, but the equality within the stretch doesn't come from stretching the same amount in the length as the width, but rather by what an individual feels within the width---testing that, before he does anything else. That will tell him what the width will stretch, without breaking the brittle bond. Sometimes that width is locked down so tight, the powerstretcher must have the handle darn near half-way down, before the installer can statr to break the bond and get the carpet to move in the width. If that's the case, you are dealing with a piece of carpet that should not be stretched a lot in either the width or length, but rather just enough in the length and only enough in the width, to get the carpet to hold on the pins and be stretched just enough so as to keep the width tight and holding. A little more stretch can be put on the length, but I never take a lot more, even though I make it good and tight. Notice the weft lines are larger and they are made in a different fashion from the warp lines. Dang warp and weft, I haven't really studied that enough, but for the moment, warp backing lines are in the length and weft backing lines are for the width. Yes, part of the reason for the loss is the carpet isn't stretched real tight, as can be done with a powerstretcher, but if one stretches that tight with a powerstretcher, then it is likely they have done so for but a short period in time, because the plastic must lose its ability to pull back to its origional position. Part of the reason is due to SBR. Does anyone know why? However, I believe many of the stretching issues are due to the inconsistencies in the fillers through-out the backing system. As people strat to walk on these carpets, the weight of the people and the movement the pad allows, breaks the brittle bond, wheather the carpet is tight or loose. Everything I am saying is predicated on what I've seen, heard and felt through-out my service on the floor. While all of it sounds and feels right, there isn't enough proof without testing--in some things I say, like how the plastic backing--having such a brittle bond does not hold its stretch well--because as the brittle bond breaks down, the walk areas will become effected, while the rest stays relatively tight and how plastic loses its resiliency with sometimes, very little time. To stretch these carpets and pull one wall off the strip and see how far it receeds at different times, in the width and length, sometimes pulling ojne wall and sometimes 2 3 and even pull all 4 walls, just to guage the carpets reaction and retention. The only way to know what must be known, is to have a modest test facility.