Well I took the plunge and swallowed my fears and tried my hand at some carpet repairs. These two were both in the same apartment and the manager told me to experiment all I wanted to. The first three pictures are of a burn in the middle of the room, and the second was at the doorway from a dog trying to get out of the bedroom.

Good work.

Me personally i'm not much fan of the cookie cutters.

Looks like you figured it out. 

I'm sure the customer was happy.

I am using three different guys who have done this work for like 20 years or so. (brothers and father) all use the cookie cutter IF they have a big enough area. Cig burns they just cut to the backing with a knife.

Just because someone has 20 years of experience does not mean they are doing it correctly.  One can learn a new wrong trick for 2 weeks than do that same thing for the next 20 years.  I also have a guy that i send some of my repair/restretch jobs to and he does things i'd questioned.  I've gone to 2 iicrc courses and have dvd's from those instructors teaching different ways of making repairs and restretching, not one way is right but in my opinion there are other ways of not having to use the cookie cutter method, i just don't like using it.

You can do small ciggarette burns without making such a large hole in the carpet especially a round one, also depends on what equipment you are using, if you're just going with the old fashioned iron and glue gun which most 10-20 years guys do it's alright, but there are other ways to do carpet repairs, some just look neater than others. 

I just don't have the time to do repairs right now, i would do small grafting work, and sub out all the restretching.

 Tim's work looks fine to me.

A cookie cutter will cut the loops on a loop pile carpet. Be careful on loop carpet.
Repairs look good. Welcome to the repair side of the business.
I know installers that use a knee kicker to install carpet. They have been doing it that way their whole life. When using a knee kicker you can not achieve the proper stretch on carpet,period  Carpet Mills state that carpet must be power stretched in.

The 'dude I know' is IICRC taught. He has enough patches to make a freaking quilt. He uses a cookie cutter. I'll tell him he is doing it wrong.

Good work.

Me personally i'm not much fan of the cookie cutters.

Me neither. Don't get me wrong, they have there place, but I just prefer to make all my cuts with the cushion back/loop cutter and knife.