I haven't installed any Lees carpet for a few years, but never liked their backing. There's barely enough adhesive in the backing to keep the yarns in place when you cut the seam, mainly the head seams. Side seams aren't quite as bad, but even those have a heck of a lot of primary backing pieces hanging loose making thermo sealing a pain...... Latex sealing is probably as bad.
I discovered on the job that I'm working on, that even with the iron set barely above 3, (and I don't mean 3 1/4) that the seam wants to curl a tiny bit. I pulled a 'MacGuyver' quite a few years ago and made my own version of the Seamerdown. Without that, I wonder if a regular seam weight would have flattened this curl.
I did two 13 foot longseams. The dining room seam was done with Orcon XK-50, which I use on almost all seams. I did a 13 foot bedroom seam with XU-90. With that XU-90 a seamer setting of 2.5 is as hot as you can run this tape. That seam didn't try to curl.
I'm gonna look at these two seams after I stretch them today to see how they look. I may use the XU-90 on the rest of the seams in this house. I certainly will on the doorway seams which are head seams.
The house is a modular home and with 3 bedrooms, a dining room and living room, 4 closets. With a 12X118 foot roll of carpet, there's 90 feet of seams.
Anyone else enjoy working with Lee's backing as little as I do?
It's pliable tho, so it seems to be friendly as far as stretching goes. I just hate the way it wants to fall apart when cutting seams. Sealing the head seams is like minor surgery locking in the loose primary backing threads and filling the voids between the primary and secondary backings.
The backing eats blades and cutting a seam with a new blade feels more like I'm cutting with a dull blade.
I discovered on the job that I'm working on, that even with the iron set barely above 3, (and I don't mean 3 1/4) that the seam wants to curl a tiny bit. I pulled a 'MacGuyver' quite a few years ago and made my own version of the Seamerdown. Without that, I wonder if a regular seam weight would have flattened this curl.
I did two 13 foot longseams. The dining room seam was done with Orcon XK-50, which I use on almost all seams. I did a 13 foot bedroom seam with XU-90. With that XU-90 a seamer setting of 2.5 is as hot as you can run this tape. That seam didn't try to curl.
I'm gonna look at these two seams after I stretch them today to see how they look. I may use the XU-90 on the rest of the seams in this house. I certainly will on the doorway seams which are head seams.
The house is a modular home and with 3 bedrooms, a dining room and living room, 4 closets. With a 12X118 foot roll of carpet, there's 90 feet of seams.
Anyone else enjoy working with Lee's backing as little as I do?
It's pliable tho, so it seems to be friendly as far as stretching goes. I just hate the way it wants to fall apart when cutting seams. Sealing the head seams is like minor surgery locking in the loose primary backing threads and filling the voids between the primary and secondary backings.
The backing eats blades and cutting a seam with a new blade feels more like I'm cutting with a dull blade.
