Screen Printing Pt. 2

May 18th, 2010 by David

The screen printing process was not as smooth as I had hoped, and I was certain I was going to fail, however, in the end things turned out okay. 

I started by unpacking my equipment and watched the demonstration video. That same night I coated the screen with emulsion and let it sit overnight. In the morning I discovered that the emulsion was too thick on top and had drips that hardened (I had it sitting upright to dry – big mistake). Friday night I washed it out and recoated the screen. I put up a fan and let it dry. After that I went to burn the screen with my 500w light – the bulb was broken during shipment. At this point it was 2:00am and I was not going to go and pick up a light, but I needed to get the shirts done for the event on Saturday.

I rigged up a jenga stack of crap to get my screen close enough to a light (we have no lamps at all) and left it there for an hour (after having already left it on the table for an hour).

I went out on a limb and decided to just rinse the thing out. I was certain the entire screen was going to rinse out because the light wasn’t “powerful” enough.

I was wrong. The screen was perfect.

After drying the screen, I hooked it up to my small hobby press and did a test print… it was working!

Glory hallelujah!

The final product, a beautiful piece designed by my friend Pat Perry.