Random Thoughts

I couldn’t make sense of my problems with screen printing the shirts.  Either too much ink or way too little ink.  So I watched a couple of youtube howtos.

I’ve been using the wrong type of squeegee!

There’s one with hard-ish edges for printing onto paper, and there’s one with rounded edges for printing onto fabric, and I was sold the wrong kind.  I’ve now ordered the right kind.

Until that arrives, I can’t experiment further with screen printing, so I thought I’d give Inkodye another whirl, just for fun.

I rolled the dye over the shirt, and gaffaed a transparency to it.

I gaffaed a second on top of the first.  I’m not sure that’s necessary, but because the printer prints out kinda gray-ish blacks on transparencies, I thought it might make sense.

Out on to the balcony for 20 minutes for some sunshine.

OOPS!  The sun went away.  HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?

Oh.  I should have looked up.

Hm…  but the dye almost looks finished…  Just an area around the shoulders that looks under.  I’ll just have to leave it out there until those turn, too.  Which might take an hour unless the cloud cover thins out.

If it starts raining it’s a wash.

Tee hee.

Uhm…   the whiteness around the shoulders turned out to be condensation and not too little expo…  expo…  sun. I think I’ve over-exposed the ink:

Or the transparency is bad.  Or both.  Well, into the wash and see what comes out…

That’s a very foamy detergent the Inkodye came with…  Or perhaps I used too much.  Anyway:

Way over-exposed, and it appears that the gaffa lets light though?  Hm.  Well, the next one should be perfect, right?

For my second attempt, I tried using less ink, but that made it necessary to squeegee over the silk several times before I pressed it onto the fabric to give it a last squeeg.

And that obviously pushed too much ink through the screen, so things filled in too much.

So:  More ink, and just a single pass.

Even though the screen wasn’t exposed well, I thought I could make an attempt to print something, just to see how that goes.

I put a backing board into the shirt to have firm to print onto.  And then I put the shirt onto a frame to raise it from the floor, because I’m printing the screen from the wrong side, since I exposed the wrong side.  Genius.

The ink is a lot firmer than I thought it would be.  It just a glob of … stuff.  I start wiping the squeegee all over the screen anyway.

Disaster.  I pressed the paint through unevenly, and I think the backing board (in addition) wasn’t solid enough, so they kinda fade away.

Oh, well.  Time to wash the screen and the squeegee.  The paint is water soluble, fortunately, so that’s easy enough.

I think I’ll give this screen one more try, but squeegee things just once with a more even coat and see how that goes.  But I think I have to make a new screen to get better results.

Despite not having the proper light, I’m attempting to do some screen printing.  I have to practice, right?

So dissolve the sensitiser and pour it into the emulsion.  It turns green!

Squeegee the emulsion onto the staple side of the screen in a dark-ish room, and let it dry for three hours in a very dark room.

Then put a transparent film positive onto the staple side and wait for an hour, since I have a 100W bulb, which is really too wimpy.  People on the interwebs says that the emulsion turns either blue or a darker green when exposed, but it definitely remains green.  It turns a slightly more dark shade of green, but it’s subtle.

Eurhm…  when I’m printing the shirts, I’m supposed to flip the screen over, so won’t that make these prints mirror images?

YES!  THEY WILL!  D’oh.  I’m supposed to either expose the other side of the screen or flip the transparencies over.  People on the web seem to disagree on the preferred method.  In any case, they way I did it is just wrong.

After an hour, I take the screen into the shower and blast it with cold water on both sides.  As if by magic, lots of the unexposed areas are washed away, leaving a white silk.  Seems to work well on the logo (which was furthest from the lamp), but the bits that were closest to the lamp seem over-exposed and won’t wash away.

In any case, since these are wrongly flipped, I can’t print them anyway…  Or can I? Can I print using the wrong side of the screen?  Worth a try before I wipe the screen, perhaps…

TO BE CONTINUED