Grafting is not really that difficult but it does have certain little things that must be attended to or it is very easy to have the wrong pile height or have a slight overlapping. It only take 1/64th of an inch for the eye to pick up a difference in pile height. We must also remember, we are taking something Broken and we are trying to make it useful again. Many times we are much harder on ourselves than a consumer would ever be, which is the way it should be or we would accept poor work readily.
I personally like pile grafting, especially on berber because it works well and the foundation stays in place. The example of the top of the stairwell without a nosing is a prime example, that would have been a difficult place to put a bonded insert with the bend that was needed. A one or two or three row replacement just seems to work well with a graft rather than inserting a bonded insert. These are just my opinions and I always tell those I work with to do what works for them but to at least learn different forms of repairs and when to use them. For example, I will show at least 5 different forms of repair for an iron burn alone, then I tell them to use what they are comfortable with.
I just worked with a group this week that were all learning to graft berber and many did it very well in a short period of time. Usually with just a little adjustment they get to see how to make it look like it never happened. Sometimes when you are putting a fresh untracked piece in a traffic area, it will show a little more until it receives a little traffic, it is just the nature of our work.
Here is a grafting piece that just did not have the traffic on it and it stood up a little higher, it is all part of what happens at times, yet the client was thrilled with the work performed in their home, this was just one of about 15 grafts we did in this home.
John you are way too kind to call me that good, I would love to share with you and some of what I have shared with you I hope has helped a little. Your skills are very obvious in the work you share with us.
As for pile grafting or bonded inserts, there are no rules in repairs so as long as we make it better and it works, that is great. We will try to give some more details on more grafting as we go along.
SA