That's way better. Tuing is making a
rug. So, my journey with this actually started back in Computex of last year
where Lionus was walking around the show floor and I was looking for something to do and found this where you get to make
your own personalized rug with this crazy looking gun here and it was just
such a fun activity that we decided to get one in the office and show you guys
what it's all about. So, this is the Tuing Nations AKV gun. I don't know what
any of that stands for. Honestly, when I went to Taiwan and when I went to do all
of these other rugs, there was somebody there that was just like, "Here you go.
Here's what you do. Just go for it." So, I never looked into any of the specs.
So, I have Reese here who apparently has this gun to help me today. I have this
exact same kit that we purchased here today at home. I've been toughing for about 5 months. Um, I am by no means an
expert. Um, as will become quite evident later in this video. Uh, but yeah, I can
show you what to do. I do know some basics. Like I know this is what you use
to pull the thread through. Yeah. Um we got the power supply brick. Yeah. Power
connector. And let's see if I can even get it out of here. Doesn't want to come
out. Yank it. Oh, they're pretty. Don't
worry. They're pretty tough. They're pretty tough on purpose. It looks
industrial, right? Like you would never think that you could just have a kit like this at home. It looks like a
weapon is what it looks like. So, I honestly don't know all the different
components here. I'm sure there's a motor in here somewhere. And then it
connects to scissors. I know that these are the scissors. Um and then the thread
just goes through this and through the scissors and you're ready to go
basically. It does the magic. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think it has it has a a
reading. It has a digital speed readout uh which is unique to this gun. It's
pretty handy for when you're you know if you're doing large pieces um have doing
a faster speed obviously you can get through it quicker just nicer. But can't
you just feel that? Like, do you need the digital readout? No, you don't need it. But this it's a nice bonus, right?
It's visually I feel like I I'd have to try it with the digital readout, but
when I did it before, I'm so focused on my straight line and going up and down
the way I'm supposed to that I I wouldn't necessarily see this. No, definitely not. You You're only You're
only going to look at it when you're adjusting it. Right. So, if you need more speed, it's just it's just easier
to like get back to where Do you not just use your finger to control the
speed? No. Whoa. That's just on and off. Whoa. This one's Okay, this one's
different than all the others. The other ones I just I controlled it with my
finger. So if I applied more pressure it went faster. Interesting. I've never
actually used one of the like other guns. This is the only gun I've ever own. Use your own. Okay. Well, I guess
we'll learn about that today. And then we got fancy scissors. I didn't I just
used normal scissors. Yeah, these are just like we actually purchased some
extra fancy scissors. Extra fancy? Really? Okay. Look at these. What What's
with the What's with this? Uh this these are duck mill scissors. These are good
for carving once you're finished the rug. actually carving out the details to
make it look a little more okay. See, you can tell I didn't do that on any of
my rugs. I didn't have time, which is fair. Like I mean, this is still a rug.
You know what I mean? You don't have to carve it. Definitely a rug. It would definitely
look better. A manual. A manual, which we don't need cuz you're here. Yeah.
So, included in the kit, we get our frame, which is where we're going to
attach our fabric. Um, it's really sharp, but we need that because that's
how we're going to stretch our fabric across it. Reese, did you have to actually set up this frame or was it
pre-built and you just put it together with the clamps here? We built it with just it came with like eight screws. You
just screw together. Very easy. Okay, cool. Um, if you don't want their kit
for some reason, you could build your own. You can see it's just 2x4s and screws. These remind me of the tack
strips you use when you install carpets near the edges by the walls. And then you just get some clamps to secure it to
the table that you've got. And then I guess this would be something that you
would have to do on your own where you would put your yarn on these posts. And
then you have this rod here for uh pulling your string through. With most
yarns, actually, you're going to want to feed two strands into the gun. When it
pushes through, it blooms out a little better. Oh. Um it looks like whatever
you used, do you know what kind of fabric this is? Acrylic. Acrylic. Okay.
This is also acrylic. Okay. I find I don't know what acrylic you guys used
with these companies, but they look very different from what I have traditionally
used, which is just the cheap Michael stuff. So, you want to attach Well,
we'll do it. We'll do the top first. Sure. Uh, one thing that I did notice is
they included a really big frame. Some of the tuing places I've been to are
much smaller. You can see my my things are quite small. Yeah. So, I my the
frame that I purchased from Tuing Nation is their smaller size, which is only I
think about 10 in or Yeah. maybe like eight or so inches shorter sort of
thing. So, it's just a perfect kind of square. It's more of a rectangle. That's
nice for people who don't have a huge craft space. Exactly. So, what we're
trying to do is get it perfectly parallel. If it isn't perfectly level
and all that sort of stuff, your your rug can become a bit wavy. So, your
lines won't be as straight as they should be. Your lines, no matter how straight you make them, they'll be a bit
wavy just due to the nature of the fabric. So, this is the premium vacuum
material from Tuing Nation. This is 100% polyester, I believe. Uh there's cotton
polyester blends that are all right. Um
polyester is the best cuz it's the strongest material, I guess, that you
can use for this. um which means you'll get less rips, less tears, less
stretching, stuff like that. So if I make a mistake, I can just pull it out. You can just pull it out and do it
again. Okay, we've stretched our fabric over the frame, which and it's nice and
taut now, which is great cuz that's going to give us nice stable surface to
work on as we're tufting through. We need our image to get started. So having
a projector is actually really handy because then you can just trace onto
here a nice clean image instead of trying to freeraw or freehand it. Okay,
we don't want to make the image too big because it actually takes a really long
time to tuft a small thing. This small thing took two hours with just the two
colors to do. So, we don't want our image today to be too big. And if you're starting a project for the very first
time, I would start with something small as well. I think usually they do I think
2 ft by 2 ft to start. Does that sound about right to you? Yeah, sure. Yeah.
So, one very important thing is to get your projector squared with your canvas.
Otherwise, you're going to get a very distorted image, which is no bueno.
Okay. Also, another thing while she's doing that, make sure you reverse your
image when you put it onto the projector. Uh, if you don't reverse your
image, then the actual rug will be a reverse of whatever you put on here. Oh,
we should explain why. Because this looks like it's the front side, but it's
actually not. This is the back side. So, the other side is the front side. I make
that mistake a lot. And Riley asked a great question. Why do they call it
tufting? I don't know, but my guess is because the this gun is actually
scissors on the end. And what when you push it through, it's cutting little
toughs of yarn and leaving them behind. So that's that's my guess. But do you
know the actual reasoning? That's sounds
pretty valid to me. I don't know. One of the things that I really like about
tufting is that the setup once you have your frame actually built, just putting
your canvas on and getting ready to actually tuft is so short. There's so
many crafts where I feel like I spend so much time setting it up before I can get
started that by the time I'm ready to get started, like I've run out of time already. So, what we're doing now is
we're just marking the colors on the on the uh on the canvas so we know what to
put where. Okay. So, to load the gun, you should make sure it's off first.
Okay? Cuz the last thing you want to do, cuz you're going to be threading the scissors here, the last thing you want
to do is accidentally have it be on and push on it while you're threading. So,
does running two threads mean that you can do less lines? Uh, effectively,
yeah, it just it create it increases the density. So, that's one thing that I
didn't factor into the time it takes to make one of those. It might shorten the
time in half. I guess it depends what what you're going for. Like if you're going for a really dense, thick rug,
then probably not. Um, but it just it just makes it look more full. So, my
daughter actually helped me make one of these. And when you make it too dense,
it actually starts to curl on itself. So, you don't want that. Yes. So, how do
you know the difference between dense enough but not too dense? I just keep
practicing. Okay. Trial and error. Yeah.
Try a bunch of trial and error. Because I haven't used a gun like this before.
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details, you're going to want to go slower obviously, right? So I would
start probably in like the 3200 range.
Uh, one thing I do notice is that there's a LED light on the end of this,
which is nice cuz then you can see exactly where you're going in. I thought
I read somewhere on the box that there was a laser as well to show you the
exact spot. I think that's what that light is. That's what they're call. I
think that's what they're called. Any other place that I've been to, when we
get started, the first thing you do is not on your design, but you just
practice right on the edge. So, you're supposed to take the gun and push with
your shoulder, not your hand, cuz apparently that will get very tired after an hour or two of doing this. And
then you press the trigger
and it just goes. So, this is what we call a row or a line. Yeah. Perfect. And
this is the back side of the rug. So, do you want to go see the front? Sure.
So, because the other side is our front side, and because the scissors have to
poke through the fabric, you want to make sure that you have um space behind
your canvas. Oh, boy. That's too fast.
So, you can turn it down. This is not a straight line at all. I'm going to fix
this after, but So, this is Okay. So, with with the nice thing about tufting
is even when you screw up, it's not too you can just pull it out and do it
again. Yeah, that's way better. Okay. much straighter
line. It's not perfect, but it's getting there. Um, another thing you'll notice
when we thread this, we don't want to have a really long tail because that's
what gets left here. So, we want to make sure that it's a nice short tail so that
we're not wasting a whole bunch of yarn.
Oh, and I still screwed up. We'll fix that after. The great thing about how it
expands on the other side is that sometimes it's actually quite hard to
tell. So, what I do is I tend to outline the thing I'm doing first and then you
can go back and just do straight lines for the center.
I figured out the problem. This is This is much neater. Look at that line
compared to this line. It's because I'm not tall enough.
Oh, we can lower the table. Actually,
that is a much better height. You can see how much straighter that is.
One thing I want to know is does this gun adjust the length of the tuft?
Because I used my rugs are different lengths. Yes, you can. Um, the way to do
it is just by adjusting this bar here. Uh, the longer that bar is, I believe,
the shorter the length on this side will be. So, if it's a very short bar, it'll
be longer. Once we outline the piece that we're working on, what we want to do is vertical lines because there's
less likelihood of screwing that up. And because the yarn on the other side puffs
up, we don't actually want the lines to be right next to each other because that
would be too thick. So, usually what they say is one one scissor space
between the two lines. It's all personal preference really.
One thing I really appreciate is that it's not that loud, so I can have a
conversation with Reese while I'm tufting, which is super nice. Um, it's
also I don't know, it's not that heavy. Like,
I can one-hand it, which is really good, especially if I'm going to be doing this for a couple hours. I also never talked
about the handle, which is really nice to have, but I feel like that's standard
on tuing guns. Yeah. Um because in order to turn, you keep you keep your left
hand straight and you just turn the gun, the right hand. So, a little bit of
one thing that I do notice that's different from this gun compared to the other ones I've used, is that there's no
motor in here. There's no cogs on this side, which I've seen in other machines.
It's just straight bars here. I think it's because the cog is in here. You can
kind of see the outline of the center of it. So, I think that's where it turns
and that's where most people get their thread stuck. Um, but you can also see
that it's starting to build up dust here. And I can see why other people
would have trouble um with their machines when there is a cog there. I've
been calling this a cog, but I think the manufacturer refers to it as an eentric
wheel. Eccentric.
So, you can see my lines or my rows aren't exactly even, but when you go to
the other side, it's actually really hard to tell. So, that was 15 minutes of
tufting. Uh, I think maybe 10 minutes of tuing. You can see how satisfying it is
where after 10 minutes, I've already got a little trapezoid and we're ready to do
more colors. We've been taking it at a nice leisurely pace so far at about
2,000 RPMs. Um, let's see if this baby purr.
It goes up to 6,000. So, let's see what max speed is like. Whoa.
Jeez. Holy crap.
It's not that quiet. Okay, that is not quiet. And that vibrates like crazy at
that max speed. And I don't know that it was actually faster. I think you can
move faster. Oh yeah. Well, okay. But I was told when you use a tuing gun, you
let the machine move you. You don't move the machine. So it didn't move me
faster. Okay. Let me try again. Maybe maybe that was just me being tentative.
It would definitely be dancer.
Oh yeah. Okay. But you can also see that at max speed, and I think this is just
me being a beginner, it it didn't come out evenly when I moved faster.
go.
Now, that's toughing. I feel like I would only use that high
speed when I'm making a really big design and there's a big space where I
want it all one color. Otherwise, I feel like you're most likely going to be at a
lower speed. For a novice to this hobby, um, especially making a small design
like this, I'm probably gonna stick to the slower speeds. Would pros use a gun
like this? So, they could use a gun like this. Uh, this one is marketed more
towards like the proumer model. Professionals would probably use like a pneumatic gun, which can run into the
thousands of dollars. This one is priced at 300 US. And how much for the kit? The
whole kit is $400. So, you get the frame, the gun, and I believe that's it.
Wait, do you get the cloth? You get the cloth as well. Yes. Okay. Okay. But then
you have to buy your own yarn. You got to buy your own yarn and you got to buy your own carving tools and scissors and
stuff. That's expensive. But uh the class that I did where it was a two-hour
class and I got to make one of those little mini ones was $60 already. When
you're done tufting with the gun, the craft doesn't actually end there. You have to apply glue to the back of it so
that these don't come out and then you have to cut your piece out. Reese
actually already completed one where he did all the tufting and cut it out and
it's ready for gluing which includes gluing the edges in like this.
And then right right after you do that, you put a backing on like this. Your
project can be finished at that stage, but you can also carve, which is where
you take the carving machine or gun or whatever that thing is called, and you
go along and outline any parts that you want to emphasize. So when you carve
along this edge, you would be removing some of the thread here so that it shows
depth in your design. That is a really wordy way of explaining it. I'll just
show you on this one here. You can see
he carved this already. So, do you see that that separation, that depth that I
was talking about? It's like when you get a fun haircut with a design in it.
Exactly. Do they call that carving when it's on your head? Maybe.
Okay. Wait, this looks like an egg, not a circle. What happened? Well, remember
what I said earlier about the projector being square with the thing? Oh, yeah. I
mean, circles eggs.
Sexy much better. Okay. If you're
interested in more obscure tech, let us know. And uh maybe check out the ice
cream machine or the smarts toaster or the Cricut video. Anyway, subscribe for
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