Howdy everybody. I thought I'd sort of show you the screen printing process as I did my candidate screens. My camera's crappy, so a lot of steps are missing, being that the pictures are a blurry blob, but that's ok. I got drunk anyway.
This is a clean screen and some chemicals. You need chemicals. Lots of chemicals.
This is one of those chemicals. Diazo Photo emulsion. You have to mix it up with this tiny bottle of black gunk and it turns green. This stuff epires pretty quick and is super sensitive to light so you gotta work fast.
This is my squeegee. You have to use it to put an even coat of photo emulsion on the front and back of the screen.
This is what coating a screen looks like out of focus.
Now the screen must dry. It takes like an hour in a dark place with a fan. This is a good time to drink beer. (I do not recommend south paw light).
Now you have to take the image you want to burn and print it on a transparency backwards. I don't have any pictures of this because I couldn't hold the camera still by this point, so we will skip ahead to the screen being dry, and developing the screen. You have to put the image on top of the screen and shine a really bright light on it. The intensity of the light determines how long your screen will take to develop. I use a 300 watt bulb for 10 minutes. Works great. ***Keep in mind, a dry screen is like film, and sensitive to light, so limit setup time as much as possible by being completely ready before you take the screen out of the dark***
Ten minutes is a long time. You may get thirsty.
When the screen is developed it will be army green, and the place where the image burned will be lime green. You have to rinse the screen with slightly warm water until all the lime green parts come out and the screen shines through. the screen must dry before you print. Impatience has ruined more than a few of my screen printing endeavors. Not that you can see it, but here's the clean screen.
Tape any parts not covered by emulsion and lay the screen exactly where you want it. put some ink on that sumabitch and in a smooth soft stroke drag the ink across the screen just to gently cover the image. Now gather all your might, and in one strong even stroke, drag that ink across your screen again so the image prints.
Now your done. Well, you should probably clean the ink out NOW. Or you could buy another screen. And oh yes, never clean your screen in the sunlight. That kills screens too. If you want to print the image again after its clean, store it in a dark place. K.
The end!!!
