Tip for weeding small letters

[Mike Jackson]

Old Forum Post by Vance Galliher on Nov. 6, 2001

Vance Galliher

I don't do much vinyl and i'm sure this is not a new idea, but it certainly was new to me when faced with weeding a job with lots of small copy......dust the vinyl with pounce powder (light on dark vinyl, dark on light) and it makes "seeing" what to weed a lot easier...vance

Mike Jackson

Hi Vance,
If you are doing a few short lines of very small copy, you can try "not weeding" it until you apply it to the background. Do a test to make sure you don't have a really stubborn substrate that won't let you remove vinyl without leaving some residue--but that is usually the exception and not the rule.

Vance to Mike J.

.......mike,i will try that the next time on small letters. this job i had was blasting a lot of copy in glass with letters less than 1/4"...i really could'nt see what was what, and thought what if i rub it with black powder ??? .....but the dusting really works for me with any size letter......vance

Danny Baronian

Another thing I do with small letters is to place a bounding box around a few words or a sentence. If you have a large amount of small copy, you weed the large blank areas, apply the vinyl, and then weed the small copy - centers first (o,d, g etc).

Carol to Danny:

Danny, that's a great idea!
You did mention something that I've never understood, however. It's kind of a rule to weed the centers first and I don't understand why. It seems to me, particulary on small letters, that the centers keep the fragile letter in place while I'm weeding the outsides.
I've been accused of being slow sometimes and perhaps this is one of those times.

Danny to Carol:

Carol, the reason you weed the centers first is that the vinyl surrounding the outside of the letters supports, and keeps in place the small letters. Do a test; you'll see the difference, especiall on very small letters.

But - when you apply the un-weeded vinyl to the panel before weeding, then weed the small letters on the panel, it's only a matter of preference; the letters hold well wither or not the centers are done first or last. For me, it just seems you can see the letters better before application. You get used to something and you seem to stick to it (until something better comes along ).

Danny

Ops! --- "the letters hold well whether or not the ....."

Not wither. Need a spell check here

Art:

have you tried yanking away the whole background at once?... you'd be amazed at the results. To be that bold, cut the same message twice; if any missing letters, you have a spare to select & replace;sometimes, losing your temper pays off, after all,the discovery of "nylon" was an accident.
It works on 1/4" letters; mind you, a sharp blade is recomended.

[Joe House]

What I usually do is weed it when it's on the transfer tape. Kind of an intermediate level of tack between traditional and weeding after it's applied.

Joe