Dealing With Curved Windows When Car Window Tinting
Quick and Dirty Tips For Dealing With Curved Windows
Curvature is one of the things you will learn to deal with early on in your car window tinting career, if you have undergone any sort of formal training, you will no doubt have spent the first few days of your training heat shrinking rear windows. I remember back to my first training session, the instructor grabed a window from a Renault clio, which at the time was one of the most difficult rear windows to shrink, he was just showing off basically that he could shrink the film in a few minutes, I was pretty blown away when i saw that to be honest.
I spent a good 2 days powder shrinking windows with talc, that was the technique we used and i continued powder shrinking for at least another 5 years, now I use a different method using Soap, but if I had to go back to using that damn powder shrink method I would not be a happy bunny. You can see my previous post on soap shrinking here. Although I found that I could shrink curved windows OK with powder but once I migrated to soap shrinking, the time taken when it came to heat shrinking pretty much halved overnight.
So what are the differences between the 2 methods?
When powder shinking, you use the powder to stop the film from sticking to the glass, the powder sort of allows the film to float on the layer of powder and when you shrink the film with the heatgun, it doesnt stick to the glass.
The technique for powder shrinking is completely different to soap shrinking, when you powder shrunk, you still anchor the film in the 'H' pattern but then use a small circular motion with the heatgun as you flow left and right and dont focus so much on the fingers in the film like you would when wet shinking., it takes time to shrink a complete window, I would say around 20 minutes when you are a beginner, and thats for a fairly standard window, then you must perform a wet check, here you flush the powder out from under the film and smooth the film out with your hands, be careful as if you have'nt shrunk the film well, you may get a crease at this point.
With the soap shrink method, you tend to shrink a larger area of film at one time, not the small circles like when powder shrinking, and there is no need for a wet check either, as when you use a hard card with a felt edge, you can pin the film to the glass and make the film like a tight skin, you will get far fewer fingers popping up on the inside when you install the film. I just wish i discovered soap shrinking earlier in my carerre, the guys that are coming into the game now have it easy if they get a good trainer, one who taches tinting with door panels in place and soap shrinking. You can find out more on soap shrinking here.
When dealing with extreme curvature on back windows you may need to learn another technique as powder shrinking has it's limts and although I find you can do some pretty urved windows in soap, you will need to learn the Lift & Pull technique. this is a mix of wet shrinking and pulling, you need to leave the film longer than normal as you will need to pull the film by hand, i will try and find a video of the lift and pull method as a video can explain it better than I can.
Forgot to mention - to the guy who is using my articles and passing them off as his own, I am onto you! I dont write articles for you to rank your own site with!
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I spent a good 2 days powder shrinking windows with talc, that was the technique we used and i continued powder shrinking for at least another 5 years, now I use a different method using Soap, but if I had to go back to using that damn powder shrink method I would not be a happy bunny. You can see my previous post on soap shrinking here. Although I found that I could shrink curved windows OK with powder but once I migrated to soap shrinking, the time taken when it came to heat shrinking pretty much halved overnight.
So what are the differences between the 2 methods?
When powder shinking, you use the powder to stop the film from sticking to the glass, the powder sort of allows the film to float on the layer of powder and when you shrink the film with the heatgun, it doesnt stick to the glass.
The technique for powder shrinking is completely different to soap shrinking, when you powder shrunk, you still anchor the film in the 'H' pattern but then use a small circular motion with the heatgun as you flow left and right and dont focus so much on the fingers in the film like you would when wet shinking., it takes time to shrink a complete window, I would say around 20 minutes when you are a beginner, and thats for a fairly standard window, then you must perform a wet check, here you flush the powder out from under the film and smooth the film out with your hands, be careful as if you have'nt shrunk the film well, you may get a crease at this point.
With the soap shrink method, you tend to shrink a larger area of film at one time, not the small circles like when powder shrinking, and there is no need for a wet check either, as when you use a hard card with a felt edge, you can pin the film to the glass and make the film like a tight skin, you will get far fewer fingers popping up on the inside when you install the film. I just wish i discovered soap shrinking earlier in my carerre, the guys that are coming into the game now have it easy if they get a good trainer, one who taches tinting with door panels in place and soap shrinking. You can find out more on soap shrinking here.
When dealing with extreme curvature on back windows you may need to learn another technique as powder shrinking has it's limts and although I find you can do some pretty urved windows in soap, you will need to learn the Lift & Pull technique. this is a mix of wet shrinking and pulling, you need to leave the film longer than normal as you will need to pull the film by hand, i will try and find a video of the lift and pull method as a video can explain it better than I can.
Forgot to mention - to the guy who is using my articles and passing them off as his own, I am onto you! I dont write articles for you to rank your own site with!
