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Stretching seams with a knee kicker feels like a lost art
My old boss in St. Louis would make me hand-stretch every seam with a knee kicker until it was perfect, but now I use a pneumatic stretcher on almost every job, and I wonder if we're losing the feel for what's actually tight before the glue cools, has anyone else noticed the installs hold up worse on jobs where nobody touched a knee kicker?
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diana_bell7428d ago
Funny how the fancy tools are supposed to save us time but the floors are the ones paying for it later. I watched a guy last month run a pneumatic stretcher and call it tight, then two weeks later the seam was already waving at the customer. There is a feel you get from a knee kicker that no air tool can copy, you learn where the carpet wants to give and where it is already maxed out. I still keep mine in the truck and pull it out on the seams that matter, even if my knees hate me for it. The glue does not care how fast you went, it cares how tight the goods were when it set. Maybe some of these new guys should spend a month stretching by hand before they get to touch the pneumatics.
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