Help with carpeting an aluminum deck

[bassin0331]

I have a grizzly 1448, I'm wanting to carpet just the front deck and rear seat top. Is there a way to do it without the cut edges fraying.

 

[bobberboy]

I have a grizzly 1448, I'm wanting to carpet just the front deck and rear seat top. Is there a way to do it without the cut edges fraying.

Yes. I just finished recarpeting my Tracker 1448 prior to selling it and was going to post the things I learned to my build thread - then learned about the Photobucket change in policy and gave up the update.

In my case I figured a way to stop fraying but was forced into it in accidentally. I bought carpet from Overton's. It is middle grade so I thought the quality would be good. I found however when I was cutting it that somehow the grain of the carpet was not parallel/perpendicular to the edge of the carpet.

In weaving, and I assume also in jute-backed carpet manufacture, the warp threads are continuous (the long dimension of the material) and the weft threads are those running across, or perpendicular to the warp threads. These threads are at right angles to each other. The edges of the finished material are called the selvage edges and keep the material from unraveling along its length.

Generally, measuring from the selvage edge or using the selvage edge to square a cut across the fabric will produce a square cut. Somehow on my boat carpet this was not the case. I don't know how rubber-backed carpet is made but from the back there appear to be warp and weft threads. I assumed they were at 90° and parallel/perpendicular with the selvage edge but not so. The result was an installation that looked like it was done by a drunken amateur. Now while I freely admit to being an amateur, I was sober while working with the carpet (I suspect now the drunken amateur was someone at the factory).

Anyway, the result was that my cuts appeared to be crooked because while I cut across the warp/weft at 90° to the edge, the warp/weft was not square on the material. This meant I cut across many more threads than if the cuts had been able to follow a single thread line. The edges were very raggedy. One solution would be to have the edges bound but it costs too much for a boat project. The other is to melt the edge to keep it from continuing to unravel.

I have tried several ways to melt the edge and made a mess of most of them. I finally hit on a way, after a few experiments on scraps, to do a fairly decent job of it. I used a 4' metal ruler, laid on the top side of the carpet about 1/16" in from the edge and passed a heat gun along the cut edge to melt the fibers together. The metal ruler protects the carpet surface only exposing the very edge to the heat. The heat will creep under the edge if you move the heat gun too slowly and as the carpet melts very quickly and you can ruin your project pretty fast without some practice. With some practice it makes a straight line out of an otherwise raggedy edge. Trim off the fuzzy stuff first and make your cuts with a scissors. No matter how sharp the knife, cutting with a blade just doesn't do a clean job with rubber backed carpet (jute carpet is generally cut from the back side with a utility knife - at least that how I learned to do it).

I have photo's of what I did but temporarily have no way to post them here. I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words. Sorry to all for the long description.