Redneck carpet stretcher

[spartannation]

I'm pretty proud of this idea. I had a hard time getting the carpet on one of my panels tight so after a little head scratching I figured out a solution. I wrapped and stapled the carpet around one of the edges. Then I put that edge away from me and made several cuts in the carpet perpendicular to the edge towards me. This created a series of flaps. I stapled every other flap to a piece of 3/4 plywood then put a pipe clamp from the panel edge closest to me to the far edge of the 3/4 plywood. When I tightened the clamp it would push the panel away from me while the carpet didn't move, pulling the carpet tight. When the carpet was tight enough, I pulled the free flaps over the edge of the panel and stapled them, then freed the other flaps one at a time and stapled them. Worked like a charm.