So I use the duct tape trick sometimes, but it’s pretty narrow. I’d like to take advantage of the 6-8-12" widths of high tack transfer tape, but I wonder if it is sticky enough to pull masking off of cut pieces. Anyone tried this?
I tried to see if Gorilla sells a 6" (or more) duct tape, but had no luck.
It’s definitely not strong enough to remove the Proofgrade masking. It will work to remove cheap crap paper masking from a couple of other sources, but the air assist tends to peel that right back for you and then nuke it thoroughly, so it’s not even needed for that. 
I use perfectear plus medium tack. I question whether high-tack is sticky enough to do the job.
I bet a high quality packing tape could work, wonder if there’s 6" 3m packing tape? To google!
One mistake I made early on was pre-masking materials. Some of it sat their for a bit before I got around to it.
Problem there is the masking tends to set up a little and can get very hard to remove.
Now using the 12" (medium?) masking roll from Amazon and only apply when ready to burn it. Any time saved by masking a bunch at a time would get eaten back trying to remove set-up masking.
Anyway. Comes off very nicely then and even can use the blue painters tape on some of it. If that fails, then gorilla…
I remember you or someone else posting about pre-masking setting up. I remembered once leaving blue tape on a wall for too long and it pulled up the wallboard sheathing, so I understood the issue. The issue I am having is that I cut sheets with sometimes hundreds of small parts, which leads to a lot of very fiddly weeding. Sometimes the weeding process is as long as assembly.
I’m trying to expedite that, and while duct tape does work, it’s too narrow. Maybe I’ll try blue tape and see if that does it, but I am skeptical.
Have you tried one of these things? I swear it’s faster than the tape in certain applications.
I spray with 91% rubbing alcohol and that seems to loosen up the masking making it much easier to remove.
Great idea, but we’re talking about parts that are sometimes .5" across. The sheer amount of fiddling to even align it to get the razor on it, times say 300 parts? It’s a slow process.
If I was talking about 5 parts maybe…
Nuh-uh - it works best for the little fiddly bits. (And if you’ve seen any of my work, you’d understand. Half an inch would be on the large side for me. Really large.)
The secret is to start at one edge or corner, put a little pressure, and start pulling it towards yourself. Peels the little 1 and 2 mm stuff up like a champ. Anything up to about 6 mm. Lifts the edges on anything larger so that the Gorilla tape catches it and off it comes.
Really, truly…they cost 8 cents apiece …try one.
I have this set:
https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Scraper-Double-Plastic-Blades/dp/B004XJE7TY/ref=sr_ph_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526404779&sr=sr-1&keywords=scraper
…and I just tried using one. It’s not as fast as my fingernail. Maybe it could be with practice… but tape is SO much faster. I’m not talking small weedy bits on a larger piece, I am talking about tiny independent pieces. Just picking them up and setting the blade and peeling both sides is very slow.
I just did a run using painters tape, and it worked well. Thanks @brokendrum.
There is a “Tough & Wide” Gorilla tape, think it’s about 3" wide.
Getting most sign making transfer tapes wet will cause them to release, it’s how they’re intended to be used.
If you’re cutting acrylic parts you can use water or water with a little liquid detergent which will speed up the wetting, and might even cause the tape to release completely and just float away with very little work needed.
The 91% alcohol mentioned works well too if working with wood, won’t raise the grain or cause warping.
I’m with Jules on this one – after using Gorilla tape for almost everything, weeding a heap of full PG sheets filled with myriad tiny pieces over the holidays made me an instant convert to the plastic razor blade method. Way easier and faster! Now I reach for a blade first, and only consider tape if I run into issues (happens). YMMV, obviously, but worth a try for most users.
OK so your weeds… are they on cutout pieces or engrave islands? Do you hit them with the razor before lifting out of the machine? What about the back, are you masking/weeding the back?
My situation is discrete parts, so I’m not sure how this can speed things along. I’d love to know how it might if you’re using it in similar circumstances as I am.
I’ve used it with all of the above, but never weed inside the GF. Bummer if it doesn’t work for you… ¯\(ツ)/¯
The razor blades work a lot better on engraved islands of course…if you’re cutting the parts out completely first, turn a long piece of GT over and plant those little suckers on the sticky side, then peel them off.
Right. I am talking entire sheets, like 11x19, FULL of tiny parts. Hence why I wanted wider tape 
Looks like wide blue painters tape may be my ticket.
OK so I had a project with a lot of etchings on the surface of larger pieces. This meant that the masking was cut into tons of pieces. The plastic razor blade worked amazingly well, I started with tape and not only got spotty results but was also using a ton of tape in the process. Plastic razor made very quick work of it.
Good call, @jules.
Yeah, I just got some of those and am totally in love with them!