By Jon Eakes

The Carpet Revolution is Coming

This month we look at a tool that’s going to transform the carpet industry, big changes in drilling holes (believe it or not) and a paint tray that’s just too narrow to be a smash hit.

Electrical Induction
It is rare that something comes across my desk that I can truly classify as a new tool. This is one such case and it is going to change the carpet industry, making renovators’ lives so much easier.
Traditionally, wall-to-wall carpets are seamed with hot glue guns, a process that gives off toxic fumes, is messy, can burn the rug if you are not careful and is irreversible — no adjustments or repairs.
Here is a whole new concept in hot glue seaming: electrical induction. First, you line up your rug joint and lay one of several speciality joint tapes into place. These tapes are not even sticky. What is special about the tape is the type of adhesive it uses, the type of fibre reinforcement, and, in particular, its aluminium backing. Once you’ve put your rug sections together tightly — remember nothing’s even hot yet, let alone stuck — place the Kool Glide machine over the joint, and press the activation button. Just like on a glass-top induction stove, the device remains relatively cool, while the metal down below becomes instantly hot, melting the glue and bonding the rug. The real beauty of this system is that, if, for whatever reason, the seaming was not quite perfect, you can actually put the Kool Glide right back, push the button again, and the glue reactivates, allowing for adjustment or even removal. And this can be done right away or years later.
When it is time to glue in a patch, you don’t need over run, you don’t have hot glue strings and you don’t have a hot tool that you can’t put down.
It sells for $700, so for now the market is limited to those working with a lot of carpet, but it should be showing up in rental stores soon. Never again will we have to try our hand at an extremely difficult to use, hot glue seaming gun.  www.cid.ca

Drills

What’s new in drilling holes? Milwaukee has brought out a self-feeding hole saw with a replaceable cutting edge. They call it Switchblade. Blades are quick to change, cost less than a new drill and take up a whole lot less space. It comes in sizes from 1-3/8 to 2-9/16”.  www.MilwaukeeTool.com


Bosh has a new bit they call MultiConstruction. Although for drilling nothing is good as a speciality bit designed to drill into a specific material, this bit does for drills what the bi-metal renovation recip blades did for reciprocating saws. One drill will do a decent job of drilling into wood, plastic, masonry, tile, concrete and metal. No longer will you have to worry about destroying your bit when you run into a surprise in a wall. It is the special multiple carbide cutters on the tip that turn the trick. It comes in sizes 1/8” to 3/8” and can even be used in an impact drill.  www.boschtools.com
While we’re drilling holes, I have to pass this old trick on. A tradesman asked me recently how to control a carbide or diamond hold saw in porcelain or other really hard tiles. The trick is to use a 1/4” diamond drill to make the pilot hole. Then simply insert the regular wood pilot bit right through the tile, and drill the larger hole with your regular carbide or diamond grit hole saw.

Near Miss
This is a perfect example of how to hit a grand slam home run and still lose the game. Shur-Line came up with the genius idea of putting a sturdy Teflon coating on a paint tray. Just let the paint dry and peel it totally off. It was designed specifically for latex, but with a little effort to get the peeling started, it even works on other paints. But — and this is a very big but — it is only 10-1/4” wide and most Canadian paint roller handles won’t fit into the tray! Was this the biggest engineering blunder of the year, or perhaps a brand marketing strategy to help sales of the low-end, and quite narrow, Shur-Line paint rollers? Even their own top-of-the-line rollers won’t fit into the tray. It is a very cool tray, but unfortunately not a standard size.
Available at Home Depot.