Schools

[jsmitty6619]

Any schools or classes in ATL?

[Counterpart]

It is always faster to have a teacher to guide you but you still need to put in a lot of practice.

If it is really difficult to find someone around to teach you, there are a lot of tinting clips on you-tube. What really matters most is lots of practice. You must practice a lot for automotive tinting with a few car makes.

Window tinting is unforgiving, the job got to be perfect. You can't rectify a mistake.

Get some non-metallized cheap tints from ebay to learn. Then you move on to try lightly metallized films, they are a different animal. If you can conquer them, you are good to go. Many tinters in Korea are actually self-taught.

[flat rock stan]

Check my website below and then give me a call if you are interested. Hands on or DVD training is much faster than learning by trial and error. Practice is a key but you must know the proper methods to practice or you are just frustrating yourself. Any school you check out be sure and look at the syllabus to see how much time is spent hands on and the size of the class.

Cheers

Stan

[Tint Eastwood]

Are you tinting full time, part time or for a hobby at the moment jsmitty? How far along are you?

[Tintguy1980]

JS

Contact Solutia/CPFilms at 800.2llumar, they have training classes at their Martinsville, VA plant site, Dallas, TX and Orange, CA. Their offering relates to auto tint; standard and safety film, flat glass tint; standard and safety film as well as an occasional paint protection class. You can get a little info off llumar.com by navigating through dealer support to the selection for installation training; they have a downloadable pdf registration form for all locations and topics.

Like some have an will say, you can watch videos all you want, you can attend a class all you want, but it still boils down to whether or not you possess the 'knack'. Without it, you will be a bull in a china factory for a long period of time before you either get what it takes, continue on or get what it takes and decide you do not have the 'right stuff' for film installation. You can attend a high dollar training that lasts multiple weeks all the way down to a couple days in someone's shop; it still is merely an introduction leaving the bulk of learning up to the indiviual.

I've been training since the early 80's and naturals are rare, getting it within 6 months is more realistic and there are those who have so much ambition to get there they are still honing skills at 12 months. Once your skills reach the point of acceptability by the general paying public, you will still have down days that make you question yourself, 'why I ever got into it'.

I ask a few basic questions before I train one or many; 1) do you have artistic skills, 2) do you have McGyver-like thinking process (or engineer your way through challenges), 3) are you good with your hands (as in tooling or playing a musical instrument), and finally, 4) are you good with children (window film is like an undisciplined child; it will do what it wants to do, not what you want it to do); you need the patience of a saint to master film.

Edit: The answers give me insight into who might have the knack or has the best potential to succeed; the more questions answered in the positive, the greater the chance.

Much success in your attempt to 'get there'.

[Counterpart]

imho, the most sincere window films association in the world that is serious about running a unbiased program for training tinters is TWFA.

http://www.twfa.or.th/EventAsso-Gen9.html

http://www.twfa.or.th/EventAsso-Gen8.html

Tinting is a skill that can give many lower-educated a chance to get out of poverty in less-developed countries.

[jsmitty6619]

I have been working for a local shop. For about a month 5 days a week. I do prepping and stripping. I can do quarter windows pretty easy. I have gotten the hang of dry shrinking BGs. I've been struggling on roll ups. The shop uses a plotter. So hand cutting skill is minimal. I did paint and body work for a few years then detailing for about 4yrs. Then went into the army for the last 5yrs. It is like one day I'm in zone on it then one day I can't get right. I am stickler for detail and sometimes maybe that slows me down. But I had no experience with tint before I started helping this Guy out besides stripping. The Guy I work for has been doing this for 20+yrs and I'm really not expecting pay. But I would like to maybe stay in it for awhile. I think I'm just getting frustrated at myself when I do make mistakes. Anyway any advice you guys Are willing to give would be great.