There are various possibilities to add relief to your work. Depending on how often you want to do this and how much money you want to spend, there are different options to achieve this. Listed in ascending order of price.
Tufting scissors
With scissors, you can add a small amount of relief to your work. For example, you can round off the edges to make them clearer and neater. You can also neatly trim the outer edge of your work.
Needle punch needle
The needle punch needle is a manual tool that can create loops of up to about 5cm in your work. This way, you alternate between machine work and handwork. To use these needles effectively, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with them beforehand. For tufting fabric, you need at least a size M or L needle. This is the cheapest solution to create a lot of relief. You can leave the loops as they are, cut them into rods, or shear them.
Hand tufting tool
This tool is a semi-automatic means of adding loops to your tufting work. With this tool, you can relatively quickly add loops of 4.5 to 5.5 cm. These can also be cut or sheared.
Heavy duty rug carver / shearing machine / trimmer
With this rug carver, you can create relief faster and more extensively. You can choose to shear certain parts more, and you can also use the carver to round off the edges. It’s wise to practice with this and important not to shear into the tufting fabric, so don’t go too deep. This machine can be used with a guide for an even result or without. NOTE: this machine is not the same as a standard trimmer. It’s a heavy-duty machine, so more powerful and much better able to keep working with the small particles that are released during shearing.
High pile tuftgun / high pile tufting machine
The high pile tuftgun or high pile tufting machine is a machine that has recently come onto the market. Where previously you needed a compressor for high pile tufting, this is not necessary with this machine. With this machine, a lot of relief can be added to your work very quickly. It can tuft rods of 3.5 or 4.5cm. It’s important to know that this machine is significantly larger, heavier, and louder. All of this because the tuftgun naturally has to do heavier work.
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