What Is a Pin Pen Weeding Tool?
Tiny letters tear and the dots stay put, and the blunt stock hook is why. The tool the regulars use is cheap, or free if you make it. It's also sharp.
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Someone in r/cricut had weeded with the stock tool for over a year and kept seeing other people use a pen. They asked the thread what it was.
A reply gave the answer in a line. It's called a pin pen, and there are plenty of them about. The person who asked wrote back that everyone on YouTube seemed to have one and they'd never known its name.
What is a weeding pen?
It's another name for a pin pen: a needle point inside a ballpoint-pen barrel. Click the end and the point comes out. Click again and it goes back in.
Sign suppliers sell the same pen for weeding and for popping air bubbles under vinyl as it goes on. Theirs has a retractable point, a cushioned grip and a pocket clip. A reply in an older thread says a lot of vinyl suppliers sell these and calls it the best tool for weeding.
One supplier marks the name as its trademark, and crafters use it for the whole type. Listings also call the same thing an air-release pen, so search both names.
Why the stock hook loses on small letters
The person who started the "Best weeding tool?" thread had just unboxed a Cricut. The tool from the starter kit was flat on the end and hard to use, and the word they settled on was blunt. Another crafter is fed up with how dull the branded and unbranded picks both are.
When you're weeding small vinyl letters, a hook needs an edge to get under, and the dot over an i has none. A needle goes into the piece and lifts it out. The pen is for anyone doing fine lettering or glitter vinyl. One owner three years in finds it much easier than the standard tool, glitter vinyl especially.
Does a weeding tool need to be sharp?
Sharp enough to hurt. In a thread asking whether a weeding tool should be sharp at all, one reply says you want them that way, because some weeding feels like surgery and you'll want the precision.
The crafter who bought one from a vinyl supplier says it works great and that they've poked themselves far too many times with it. The safety is the click, so retract the needle every time you put the pen down.
One crafter would rather not have it sharp, to avoid damaging the vinyl, and weeds with the bare tip of a mechanical pencil instead. The others want the point.
What to look for
Owners keep coming back to the same few things.
- A retractable point. The sign suppliers' pen has it, and a crafter who built their own wanted it too.
- A grip you can hold for a long session. One owner picks pens with a little extra cushion over the straight-barrel ones. Another found thin metal picks, no thicker than a cheap ballpoint, hard to hold for long and built up fatter handles out of polymer clay.
- Spare tips. The point dulls. A crafter's stock tool went dull almost at once and they went back to plain pins. Sign suppliers sell a refill for exactly that.
- A clip. They roll and they vanish. Someone in the first thread keeps losing theirs and now owns a pile.
How to make a pin pen weeding tool
The free version is the top answer in that first thread. A mechanical pencil from the dollar store and a sewing pin. Snip the ball off the pin and slide it, point last, into the pencil where the lead goes. Someone else in the same thread made their own with a sewing needle instead of a pin and says it works wonders.
No glue needed. A builder in the newer thread lets theirs retract like the lead would, which makes it a pin pen in everything but price. If yours doesn't work, their fix is a needle closer to the width of the lead, or a different pencil.
Tweezers for the smallest pieces
The pen isn't the whole kit. For very small cursive, one owner has a pin pen and rarely uses it, because long needle-nose tweezers grab the pieces better.
Another keeps the needle pen for the very smallest bits and reaches for pointy tweezers most of the time. Sharp angled tweezers, says a reply in the newer thread, work like a weeding tool at the point and can grab and pull as well.
The other budget answer that keeps coming up is a pick. A dental pick is the best tool one crafter has found, and a hardware-store pick set does the same job for very little.
Start with the pencil drawer. A mechanical pencil and a sewing needle cost next to nothing and tell you in one evening whether a needle point suits the way you weed. Then buy a retractable pin pen with a proper grip and spare tips, and keep the stock hook for the big pieces. Add thin tweezers for the smallest lettering.
