Stark raven mad!

[T Monahan]

Some one made a comment here before that rings true in most situations. Just paraphrasing, they said something like"if a customer lets their pets use their home as a toilet...". I recently had a customer who asked me to clean his wall to wall carpet. When I looked at the job, I was horrified. There were no urine stains, there were urine rooms. They had 3 little dogs that roam the house peeing and worse, everywhere. I told him that I really can't improve it much and it will smell worse when I am done. He just said do your best and the worst part was as I was cleaning, he is watching and exclaiming about how good the carpet looks. I just shook my head, collected the money and drove away in my dog piss smelling van that I will have to clean and disinfect at the shop.

We have a few householders like that. Yeah, and the van stinks too.

 

[Papa John]

Stark carpet is what I deal with if not hand knotted. Lol just another wool manufactured by everyone else. Mt list could go on and on. Hand knotted is alot more money what you afraid of.?

Harry, I believe you may have a centrifuge in your plant and I think having one will enable rug cleaners to do risky rugs with less problems.

My statement is based on cleaning stark rugs in the home--
Some stark rugs have gotten extremely wavy with just a lite pre spray and the rugs didn't return to normal after drying.
The wavy (shrinkage pull) is usually more certain on bordered Stark rugs.
We have cleaned many stark rugs without problems-- but we still warn the customer and get a waiver from them first before we clean them.
The risk is reduced if we use low moisture and do many dry strokes.
I'm wondering if over stretched warp yarns are the cause of the problem rugs.

 

[Harry Myers]

Papa it us the Jute in the rugs that cause problems. I do not have a cetrifuge. Still to small to buy that.

 

[The Great Oz]

My statement is based on cleaning stark rugs in the home--
Some stark rugs have gotten extremely wavy with just a lite pre spray and the rugs didn't return to normal after drying.
The wavy (shrinkage pull) is usually more certain on bordered Stark rugs.
We have cleaned many stark rugs without problems-- but we still warn the customer and get a waiver from them first before we clean them.
The risk is reduced if we use low moisture and do many dry strokes.
I'm wondering if over stretched warp yarns are the cause of the problem rugs.

The woven border rugs will turn into potato chips because woven rugs that use cotton or jute in the backing will shrink, and mostly in one direction. When borders are put on, two of the borders will have the weave running at 90 degrees from the main field and the other two borders. The pieces shrink against each other, causing the rippling. Lacking a tack-out floor, the rugs will need to be cleaned without getting the back wet.

If you have a tack-out floor you can fix this by blocking, but if you have a tack-out floor you should just tack out the rug before cleaning. Sometimes the borders have to be taken off and the rug remade, as the seams will tear before the backing will stretch.

Likewise, the jute or sisal rug will shrink, the tapestry border will not, the rubber backing will not, and the construction of the rug is not strong enough to allow much in the way of blocking back to flat. Limited moisture = limited cleaning.

 

[Harry Myers]

Brian if is sewed alot of times it easier. It is suitable for the construction. If it's seamed taped no good. Definitely a blocking floor is key. Good advice.

 

[The Great Oz]

Several years ago I met a guy that worked for Stark making border rugs. He said everything is glued now, using a hot-glue gun with a two-inch tip. No more sewing.

He showed me the new border rug that was hanging on display: It had a very inexpensive synthetic felt backing glued on, and through the backing you could see the skinny hot-melt seams. Didn't even use fiber tape.

 

[T Monahan]

Bryan, your post and pictures were spot on. Nice report.