The washout. It’s really just scrubbing and spraying water.  But the selection of materials can be very important to prevent any casualty to your screens. A very noobie mistake is to use rough sponges, if you scrub too hard, you can actually tear the screen. Use a big fat soft sponge like mine (for washing car) and gently scrub the back and front of the screen to dissolve the unexposed emulsion. I usually use a little detergent as well, to reduce friction between sponge and the screen mesh, to clean the screen at the same time, and the white soap foam that seeps through gives a rough indication to the portion that has been washed out, so you will not miss out any portion of the screen.

You need a hose and a spray gun, not a pressure washer (it will blast away the yet stable emulsion), just any regular garden spray gun with decent pressure. Of course, a space you can get wet, for example, a washroom like mine.

Spraying at the screen.

The open areas getting more obvious and my sponge.

When you are satisfied with the details you can obtain, leave the screens to dry and get ready to print. You may want to fix up any pinholes or errors with a screen-filler. It’s a brown liquid like paint and you brush it on the printing side (back of the screen). If it’s huge, use masking tape. Good luck!

For pure mail art goodness, click here.

That’s right, we coat our screens in the studio as well, usually right before dinner. Coat them, keep them in a light-proof cabinet, and we have dinner while they dry. Very often, I will expose them right after drying, but if there is an artist talk or an event going on nearby that I’m curious about, I will leave the screens in the cabinet overnight and expose them the next day.

The photos appear a lot brighter here, but the room is actually dark with yellow lights.

Coating the screen. As you move up, tilt the angle of the coater towards yourself. This will gradually reduce the contact of the emulsion to the screen, then you can take away the coater when you reach the top. It has to be a swift movement, one nice scooping motion! If you do it slowly, the emulsion will be thicker and you will have problems later, chances are you will get an under-exposure, because it will take a longer time to burn the screens. You can always scrape the excess emulsion away to make the coatings neater.

Emulsion and light-proof box. We also store the box in another dark coloured bag.

Using a scoop-coater here. It’s really efficient. I’m coating 3 screens in a row, so just pour into the coater about that much for three and when you’re done pour the leftovers back into the bottle. If you find the coating too thick, you can scrape away the excess emulsion on the screen with the coater by adjusting it to an angle of around 70-80 degrees. When coating it, tilt the coater further inwards the screen around 30-40 degrees. I’m not sure exactly what I am describing, you will come to know when you are actually doing it. I’m in fact done with the screen in this photo, I’m just demostrating how to hold a coater and that you need the screen to be placed back against a fixed point such as the cabinet hinge, to prevent it from moving. 

The lights. I’m still not sure if it’s really filtered or usable as a darkroom light, but so far I’m pleased with all the results. Just do everything quickly I guess.

After the screens are coated, place them to dry in a light-proof cabinet. You may want to have a hair-dryer in there to speed things up.

Well, that’s it then. Dinner time! Exposure and wash-out later on.

For pure mail art goodness, click here.

It’s almost like a super flat-box table, with many rows of pinholes on the surface top and hollow on the inside, connected to a vacuum pump. The suction created will hold paper down to the table. It’s useful to prevent paper from sticking to the screen after a print stroke, when you want to change paper for another print. Inks are sticky when they are still wet, so if there is a thick  layer of ink down, it will most probably stick to the screen.

I have attached a pdf file. It contains building plans for a vacuum table and also a one-colour t-shirt printing jig. You can make your own adjustments to it. There are also millions of screen-printing forums you can visit to find out more about building your own equipment. Most of the time, I visit http://www.gigposters.com/, you can find plans for almost anything screen-printing in their archives. It is also actually a site dedicated to music posters, so you get lots of information about the best music and design. There are lots of artists sharing their art-making experiences in there too. You may get to meet all the maestros of rock music art, Frank Kozik, Jermaine Rogers, Seripop, Jay Ryan, Print Mafia, Aesthetic Apparatus…

Also check out youtube, it’s helpful because it’s very visual.

Vacuum table/t-shirt jig building plans .pdf file

This plan is courtesy of Andy Mac from Squeegeeville.

Originally from a book he wrote, he is generous to share it.

Here are images of my press:

http://unfinishedadventures.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/hello-world/