One of the worst parts of create t-shirts using heat transfer vinyl is weeding heat transfer vinyl. Depending on how detailed your design is, this can take up a significant amount of time. Here are five tips to help you speed the process and generate more profit if this now your side hustle.
A Lint Roller?
1. Get yourself a lint roller. I use a lint roller whenever I do any weeding. It works great for those tiny little pieces of vinyl that seem to stick to everything but your weeding tool. All you have to do is pick it and stick it to the roller. This method has cut my weeding time in half. Once the lint roller is covered in vinyl just pull off that section and start with a clean section.
Use Your Heat Press
2. If you have large pieces of vinyl to peel off and it takes some effort to remove, warm the vinyl under your heat press for 20 to 30 seconds. After a good warming up the large sections of vinyl will peel off with ease. Just remember not to close your heat press, and you don’t need it to be 325°F, just around 200°F will do the trick.
Repetition Is Good
3. I make sure to develop a pattern for weeding. This method will help to ensure you don’t miss areas and the repetition will help speed the process. If I am doing 20 or more vinyl transfers, I use the first four to test which corner of the transfer to start on. This is after I pick out all the portions that won’t come out when you start with a corner and try to peel the whole transfer. There is always one direction that will be the easiest. It will typically pull up more of the nooks and crannies without having to keep changing direction.
Haste Makes Waste
4. Do not let your vinyl transfers sit too long after cutting. I have found that if I cut the transfers and wait a day or two to weed, I will run into more problems. Generally when I wait that long, the small pieces of vinyl that I want to stay on the transfer shift much easier. This causes missing pieces on your transfers and they won’t all match, which as we all know, looks unprofessional.
Have The Right Tools For The Job
5. One of my biggest issues when weeding heat transfer vinyl is the center of the letter “A.” It never wants to stay on the backing sheet when I need to peel the letter and not the inside portions of the letter. I have resorted to using two weeding tools to accomplish this task with a lot fewer headaches. I place the point of one of the tools on the center of the “A” and then pick there letter with the other tool. It does slow the process, but in the end, it saves time over having to replace that little triangle piece. Never really knowing if it flipped over and won’t stick after pressing.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these tips will save you some time and effort in your weeding process. If you are only doing one or two transfers, you won’t see a significant drop in time, but when you get into doing fifty transfers every second counts. Good luck and happy weeding heat transfer vinyl. Remember that the right tools for the job will help as well. Check out a great set of tools available on Amazon for under $10, by clicking here.
Read more about using heat transfer vinyl in this article: What Is Heat Transfer Vinyl?