Effective Low Cost Carpet Rake

I have always owned very hairy dogs, (see picture :)

With hairy dogs come hairy carpets, I have purchased all sorts of rubber/plastic/fibre "Carpet rakes" I have never found one that worked well enough to use on a regular basis so they tend to end up at the back of my broom cupboard. Another thing to note is that these are not necessarily cheap, the blue one was £30! (I will say that it does work very well on astroturf removing leaves and thatch)

I thought I could do better what follows shows I was correct :)

I have used these hand rakes to get dog hairs off my clothes forever, they cost no more than a couple of pounds each.

As proof of concept I literally took the handle off one and screwed the rake onto the end of a broom handle, it worked fine, lifting the hair out of the carpet, no more picking up clumps of hair that had been pulled together on the floor, just pick it off the tines in a lump.

There is not a lot to this:

Materials

• 3 hand rakes
• A piece of good quality 12mm plywood
• A handle and socket (in my case I used an old dustpan set, I will explain)
• 4 countersunk screws and nuts (m4 dia x 25mm long)
• Contact adhesive

Tools required

• Wood cutting saw be it power bandsaw or hand saw for the plywood
• large screwdriver
• Pair of sharp scissors
• screwdriver and spanner for bolts
• sanding wheel/spoke shave/plane (your choice)

Using a large screwdriver pry back the metal edges that hold in the rake.

Take care doing this as you will be in danger of stabbing yourself with the screwdriver if you are too cack handed!

As the pads come out mark with a sharpie the long edge that pointed away from the handle so that you will get them the correct way round later.

Cut off the ends of the rake pads with some sharp scissors (where there are no wires) so that they will push together without too much of a gap, lay them side by side and cut the plywood to just a few millimeters wider and longer than the 3 rake pads. Round off the corners of the plywood.

I used the lid of an old long handled dustpan for the handle socket, I cut it out of the middle of the lid, drilled and screwed it to the middle of the plywood as shown.

Apply and spread contact adhesive to the underside of the plywood and the underside of the rake pads. Allow to flash off until touch dry then MAKING SURE THAT THEY ARE ALL THE RIGHT WAY ROUND, press the pads firmly in place.

Fit the handle in the socket, use a wood screw to hold it in place as it will be under some pressure in use.

Yes it does! once you find the correct angle to stop it skipping it does a great job.

S5001197 from Rog8811 on Vimeo.

So there you have it a way to reuse simple clothes cleaning brushes to make a very effective carpet rake that cost around £6 and works!