One of the many things I’ve learned recently is how to screen print, at least one method of doing it. TechShop has a CNC vinyl cutter and a basic screen printing station, so I started with a vinyl mask for the screen (as opposed to a photo-sensitive process to mask off the screen).
And since I have a big road trip coming up, I thought it only fitting that my first screen printing project should be Dawson’s Amazing Road Trip Screen Printed T-Shirt.
![Weeds](https://www.nomadicfrog.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_5734-900x900.jpg)
The first thing to do after cutting the vinyl is to “weed” it, which involves several minutes of mind-numbing picking and pulling to separate the vinyl wheat from the chaff. This is extra tedious if the vinyl cutter is missing a part that controls the quality and thoroughness of the cut…ahem.
![](https://www.nomadicfrog.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_5681-900x900.jpg)
After pulling out the weeds, the vinyl stencil gets mounted to the screen….of which I apparently failed to get a photo.
As usual, the basic concept is relatively simple: make a stencil (or have some plan for getting the ink on the object), push the ink through it, cure it with some heat. The stuff that comes first – having a good idea for a design – and then actually being good at printing – are harder. I can’t imagine doing this well, reliably and repeatedly, like my friend David’s business does (and in multiple colors on all sorts of objects…mind boggling.)
And of course there are a ton of variables to keep things interesting. For example, to start with I printed a few shirts with Speedball’s denim colored ink, but for fun I got a few dark colored shirts, and used “discharge paste” to, instead of adding color, remove the dye that is in the shirt to start with.
![](https://www.nomadicfrog.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/65A3800.jpg)
In case you couldn’t see the discharge paste in action well enough in that photo…
![](https://www.nomadicfrog.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/65A3762-600x900.jpg)
As an aside, here’s how the design came together: First, I had the idea that I wanted to make a shirt, with a kinda retro feel to it. Couldn’t figure out anything more specific than that. Kari has a look at my sketches, makes a few comments, and bang, it falls into place. Except I can’t draw for beans, so my “Bears Ears Buttes” look more like…melted sticks of butter or something. So Shane, one of the regulars over at TechShop, took a few minutes and created the mesas that fit so well with my design idea. (Shane is also the guy that taught me screen printing (and vacuum forming, but that’s a different post) and is generally very helpful with all manner of things.)
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