Tip of the Week VOTE

Been working on shaving the top edge instead of doing the micro edge and have some mixed thoughts about doing it. Really like the look but hate the process of doing it. 1st problem is bumping the edges with my lidco card and paper towel snagging the top edge when you pull back and causing either a adhesive smudge or dirty water wicking back under the tint. 2nd is just trying to find your 3 angles while sawing at the window with an xacto blade.....seems my line gets either a chunk taken out or the line looked like just isnt crisp. Normally I would leave a 1/16" gap and forget about it and just slam the car out and move on. I was doing a Mazda 6 when it I thought I would try something different. Did the top cut like normal and I always seem to have a high spot from either where I pierced the tint or the tint walked up alittle when I was running the blade across the top of the glass. Seem like a 30*-40* angle with the olfa gives you a nice micro edge. So I applied the tint like your doing a micro edge but just a hair higher....just enough so when you run your finger over the bevel of the glass, you can feel the edge but not really peel the edge if you snag it with the paper towel. I hit the top edge with the heat gun and was going to bust out the Xacto and thought I would just slide the olfa from the front to back while reducing the angle until small ribbons of tint would come off the blade. Did the process until I could not feel an edge with my finger any more. Gives you a super clean edge since your not sawing it or using a file and took the risk of contamination from the tint pulling back off the glass. I just had more control with the Olfa then I did the Xacto. Havent seen anyone do itor talk about it yet...I'm sureI have just been living under a rock for so long and there is probably a DVD out called the OLFA SURF and I just never heard of it. If you got some scrap to monkey with give it a try. I was surprised how easy it was to do without chunking the edge.

I learned to tint without pulling panels or bottom seals, and it has worked out for me for many years. About a year and a half ago Jeff stopped by when he worked for aegis and was pulling bottom seals on roll ups. So ever since he showed me that, I have been pulling the bottom seals on the ones that i feel comfortable pulling and pulling the occasional door panel to install felt. My point is I think if you are just starting out I would suggest learning to do roll ups without removing panels or bottom seals, even though it does make it alot easier there may be times where a customer may not want his panels pulled or you are pushed for time and dont have time to pull panels then you are gonna struggle with trying to do a good job without pulling anything. But if you know how to to a good job with leaving the bottom seals in place you will have no problem. I'm not saying don't pull them, I'm just saying learn to do it the other way first because it will spoil you and you will be wanting to pull every panel that comes in.