Thank you everyone for all the tips. I am done with them! Yeah! !Nail saver answer -

Great stuff but as always, some cautions.
Try not to press into large engraved areas, since it pulls off the engraving also.
Do not use on small, intricate cut designs. It will pull off the small segments instead of just the tape.
Razor blade, sharp probe, picks, and other options may be used then.

Sadly, no one size fits all with any of this.

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my process to avoid that is to lay the tape gently, then use the brayer to just press to the original surface. it works fine as long as you don’t have large contiguous areas engraved blocks.

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The tape is too expensive to waste over areas that don’t need weeding! :smiley:

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tape is not more expensive than my time… :wink:

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I hope to get there one day :laughing:

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gotta learn to love yourself more than $0.05 for a few minutes of your time.

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I’m glad you got it figured out because that’s a lot of weeding! Just in case it hasn’t been said yet, you can probably get away without masking at all. You sometimes might get something called “flashback” where the tray scorches the back and you can leave masking on the back if that happens, but it’s really not needed when engraving.

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You can also prevent/reduce flashback by placing your material on a sheet of paper. YMMV…

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I have found that if I need to get masking off of the outer edge of something, placing it back in the hole that it was cut from so that the 2 surfaces are level makes using the plastic razor blade much easier. If using the hole it came from is not practical, set your item next to a piece of scrap the same thickness.

Thank you, gorilla tape was the perfect solution. All 140 key chains have been weeded and I still have all my nails!!! :slight_smile:

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I used proofgrade material! :slight_smile:

Something else I have fallen back on with a lot of small fiddly bit masking projects.
Take a picture of the end game and zoom in. Masking seems to stand out (usually)

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