Tips & Tricks - Weeding tiny vinyl lettering

[Joe Pelonio]

I thought I should share this one with newer vinyl lettering people.

I am having to weed a bunch of 1/4" letters, which is really hard to do in the normal manner, as there's not much there to adhere the letters to the backing so they tend to come off with the background.

Here's what I do:

Cut the lettering on the plotter, then with Olfa/Exacto cut between lines of text just thru the vinyl, not into the release liner. Make it even easier by cutting between some of the words.

Apply the transfer tape, and peel off the backing. Secure to a table with masking tape on the edges, then weed, avoid touching the adhesive on the letters. Long, tapered and pointed tweezers make it easier. Then turn back over and apply back onto to the release liner for later installation.

[Scott Shepherd]

Great tip Joe, thanks for sharing. What transfer tape are you using for that? Medium Tack?

[Joe Pelonio]

Great tip Joe, thanks for sharing. What transfer tape are you using for that? Medium Tack?

Yes, I should have mentioned that. It would be really hard to weed with high tack and these I'm installing on glass so medium is a lot easier to peel off.

This will be an all day installation, I have to peel off the old names first and the total job is probably 100 sf. Heading out in an hour or so.

[Clarence Miller]

What exactly is meant by weeding? Removing the masking? Just wanted to make sure so I don't gag on my toes

[Scott Shepherd]

When you cut vinyl, a tiny knife got through a sheet of vinyl, cutting all the letters and shapes you want. It just cuts through the top layer of the vinyl, leaving it all in tact, on a sheet. You have to remove the parts you don't want to stay. For instance, if you cut "TEST CUT" in the vinyl and stood back and looked at it, it would look like a sheet of vinyl. Looking close, you'd see the letters cut "TEST CUT". You need to remove all the material around those letters so you can apply "TEST CUT" to whatever you plan on putting it on. So it's the act of removed the unwanted part of the graphic.

[Larry Bratton]

and..after it's weeded..application tape would be applied over it. To apply the graphic, the release liner is removed, leaving the usable graphic attached to the tape. The graphic is squeegeed down to the substrate, then the tape is removed. The reason this works is because the adhesive on the graphic is stronger than the adhesive on the tape and can be removed, leaving the graphic behind.