How NOT to strip vinyl lettering from a trailer

This tutorial will teach you exactly how to NOT strip vinyl decals from a landscape trailer. This should save you HUNDREDS of dollars over the cost of having a professional do the job right the first time. I hope that you find this informative, if you have any questions or anything to add, please feel free to comment below!

Step 1: Remove your brain.

This step is of great importance. If you can't physically remove your brain, 6-8 months of smoking pot heavily on a daily basis should do the trick.

Step 2: Use absolutely no heat to remove the vinyl decals.

See that heat gun, blow torch or even hair dryer over there? Just totally ignore it. You're gonna want to chip that vinyl off in timy little pieces, and make sure you leave ALL of the adhesive.

Step 3: If some of the vinyl is being stubborn, you should really get the scraper out and really get working at it.  Metal is wicked hard. You aren't gonna hurt that, for sure.

Step.. what step were we on? I'm too lazy too look ALL the way up there

If you don't get all the way around to finishing taking the vinyl off, it's all good. I mean dinner might have been ready, that episode of Glee you've been dying to see might be on, there's a lot of stuff that can take a busy, hard working guy like yourself away from such a meaningless task.

Step next- Really screw everything up; break out the power tools.

You might be getting frustrated. maybe watching that saved by the bell re-run made you mad that you never got your own personal Kelly Kopowski. Power tools make stuff faster. Let's look through that shed, garage or closet and find something that'll really speed things up for you. Oh, you've got a power buffer? Detailers use power buffers! Detailers clean stuff up! You see where I'm going with this? Oh man, you're a damn genius. You just figured out how you're gonna save those greenbacks!

There's a trick to this though, so pay attention! You back with me? Cool. I need you to keep that buffer in one spot until ALL of the adhesive is gone. don't worry about the paint, metal is hard, remember? Just keep it RIGHT where it is. If anything goes wrong, people always say "that'll buff out" so I'm sure we can fix it.

Step Oh F*#%&)K

Oh man... I forgot to mention. Metal's wicked hard, but paint... paint's kinda not hard. all that buffing that you did on the adhesive? Well, that area's looking GOOD, but the adhesive kinda acts like a sandblast mask, so you might see some "ghosting" in the area around the letters. It's cool, people pay big money for polished aluminum.

If you got this far, CONGRATULATIONS! You only got this far on one spot? It's cool. Ship it on over to the sign guys. That compound in the adhesive? Leave it. They can go right over that.

I know you're smart enough to realize the sarcasm in all of this. This was a perfect case of "Penny wise, Pound foolish;" When we quoted this trailer lettering job, we figured on 3 hours for removal. This guy has at least triple that in getting this far. Our shop rate for 1 guy is $75 an hour. We've got 7 hours into fixing this mess. so to save $225, he's now $525 and at least 12 hours of his time. Please, let the professionals, with the proper tools and experience handle your next job.

LOTS of work coming up!

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My new thing lately has been gold leaf, and I've been jumping into it with both feet- I've got lots of work that's ALMOST done, and I can't wait to share it with you! There's a hand carved sign with a '59 corvette on it (I'm going to do a post that follows the build of this sign), there's gold leaf window lettering for The Boston Tattoo Company, there's a two tone house eagle that should be ready in the next couple of days- STAY TUNED! I'll leave you with a quick shot of a sign that we hand carved at work for Lobster Express- I wish I had the talent to make a block of foam into something so incredible!

Google Eats Its Own Tail, Competes With Investment

Today's launch of Google Offers, the Groupon competitor from search behemoth Google, highlights the declining state of affairs at Mountain View. Not because it is branching out into yet another venture that takes it away from its core business, but because it is now in direct competition with its own investment.

I'd imagine Seth Priebatsch is feeling bit by the hand that fed him.

picture via staplenews.com

Priebatsch, the 22 year old founder (and as is obligitory to mention when speaking of him, Princeton dropout) of Cambridge based LBS game SCVNGR, went live with LevelUp in March; a tiered, rewards driven deals site that aimed to draw upon SCVNRG's existing user base and percolate into the general public. LevelUp's immediate success has been so good in its initial cities (Philadelphia, San Fransisco and Boston) that Preisbatch has received "nasty emails from competitors," a sure sign that he must be doing something right. LevelUp is planning to expand into all major cities and take some market share from the big 2 in the industry, Groupon and LivingSocial.

Here's the rub; Google has a significant amount of money tied up in SCVNGR; in addition to the $4 million that they invested in late 2009, they were also involved in the latest round of funding for the game, in January of this year, a round that brought the company $15M.

With the launch of Google Offers today, the boys from Mountain View will be directly competing with the company they felt confident enough to pour a large chunk of money into, while it's still in its infancy. Considering it is still in its pilot program and barely one quarter old, I can't imagine that there has been great experience to be shared from LevelUp yet, which might have justified the recent investment. Did Google disapprove of the expansion into deals by SCVNGR and it's Wonderkid prodigy? Only time will tell if this helps Google, helps SCVNGR, helps LevelUp, but for right now it feels like a ill-advised move into an investment's market.