6 Reasons Everyone Should Own A Heat Gun

If you're a DIYer (or have someone in your home who loves fixing and building things), there is a good chance you have a heat gun. Heat guns have a number of uses you'd expect from a tool like this, like removing car wraps and adhesives, or heating bolts to make them easier to remove. But there is so much more you can do with a heat gun — from drying and dethawing things to cleaning up creative projects to even roasting coffee — that makes them useful in every home.

All of these heat gun uses come with an important caveat, however: Keep a close eye on the temperature that you have the heat gun at. If your heat gun is running too hot, you risk damaging something or, worse still, setting it on fire. While this is true any time you're working with heat, this is especially true when working with small crafts, so make sure to practice proper safety when using a heat gun.

This first use might be somewhat obvious, but it's always important to mention and reiterate. If you live in an area that gets cold often, you're used to the risk of your pipes freezing. Pipes freezing and bursting can quickly flood your house, and while there are a variety of methods to stop them from freezing, sometimes it's not enough. You can use a heat gun to quickly and effectively unfreeze your pipes, whether indoors or outdoors. A heat gun will be faster than a hair dryer in thawing out the pipes, which can be important in preventing them from bursting.

However, it's very important to practice proper safety when using the heat gun in this manner. Namely, you want to make sure the heat gun doesn't touch any water, nor do you want to use it too close to the pipe you're thawing out or else you risk damaging it.

Have a child in your life that enjoys drawing on the walls? As cute as crayon art can be, it can be very difficult to get it off the walls. You can put in elbow grease to scrub it off your walls, or you can use a heat gun to get the job done much faster. A heat gun works well on crayons because they're made out of wax, so the heat will soften and melt the art. You can then wipe the melted crayon off with a cloth.

Melting crayon wax with a heat gun isn't just for cleaning it up, however. You can also melt the crayons to make neat crayon art, and the effect of a melted crayon will look different than if you used a hair dryer. You can even recycle crayons with a heat gun, such as melting them together to make rubbing crayons (which hopefully will not be used on your wall).

While it's common to use heat guns to speed up the drying of wood stain or to apply a char finish, they can also be used to dry the wood itself. This can be especially important when building a deck because if it rains while in the process of building it, you run a risk of the wood warping and mold growing while it's drying. A heat gun can dry wood quickly and help prevent these issues, getting you back to building that deck as soon as possible.

One thing to note: While you can use a heat gun to dry out a wet carpet or rug, it is generally not recommended. Using a heat gun can lead to uneven drying with the carpet, which still presents the risk of mildew growing. Coupled with the risk of damaging or burning the carpet in the process, the cons outweigh the pros.

There are all sorts of ways to take your coffee to the next level at home. Helpful coffee accessories can elevate nearly every step of the process, and they don't need to cost a lot, either. But most of these accessories miss one essential step — roasting the coffee beans yourself.

This is where a heat gun can help with a beginner and budget-friendly way to get into the hobby. Roasting coffee in this way isn't uncommon, either, as there are a number of blog and forum posts about using heat guns and the results of doing so. This method of roasting coffee beans is often called the "dog bowl" method, as the most common equipment used to roast beans this way (besides the heat gun) is a metal dog bowl. It's inexpensive and requires minimal setup, so it's not a big investment if you want to give coffee roasting a try.

If you do a lot of 3D printing projects, you've likely run into problems with stringing, which is when small bits of plastic strings are left on the final printed product. While stringing is an issue you need to troubleshoot and resolve with the printer itself, you still need a way to remove the strings from your finished projects.

A heat gun is an easy way to remove stringing. Many prefer using a heat gun to other heated methods to remove the plastic strings, as the airflow and temperature from heat guns are easier to control. Of course, as the heat gun is melting the string off, you need to keep a careful eye on the temperature to make sure you don't accidentally melt your project as well. The precise temperature will vary depending on the project, but the most important factor to remember is that the strings will melt very quickly. If you hover on one spot too long, you'll begin melting plastic you don't want to.

Mixing a heat gun and yarn sounds like a terrible idea — after all, applying a concentrated blast of heat to the fabric would likely set your project on fire. However, with careful application, you can use a heat gun to burn the fuzzy bits off of acrylic yarn to clean it up. Fuzzies are different from pilling, which is caused by fabric friction making threads tangle together; fuzzies are tiny stray threads that are typical on yarn.

The general idea is the same as melting stringing from 3D printing projects, as you're essentially melting the fuzzy bits off the yarn. As such, this only works with acrylic yarn, so yarn without plastics should be washed and trimmed instead. That said, you'll need to pay attention to the heat, or you'll end up melting the crochet work. Also, heat of any sort (whether a heat gun or lighter) can remove only so much fuzziness.