Go to the Justin Bieber site and try and buy some merch and instead you have to sign up for a newsletter. “Tour merch available everywhere now” except nowhere you would expect. It is a whole new world out there of high fashion and $1,675 tour jackets. One printed word and a skimpy scrap of…
One of our most popular series here at the Ink Kitchen is “Misprint Monday.” The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “…in the misfortunes of our best friends there is something which is not altogether displeasing to us…” I don’t want you readers to get the wrong impression from our articles on how to do things “correctly” that we…
The exact instructions for how to cure ink are “figure it out.” There is no magic formula of dryer setting and belt speed that I can give you, no matter how many of you beg for that information. There are too many variables. Some of this follows earlier posts, but this is a topic that continues…
These days most of your customers don’t want to visit your factory unless it is a “show and tell” field trip. We have found that the days of press checks are long long gone and that even nervous customers with large orders don’t want to visit the plant. Too much traffic, they are too busy,…
Q: What temperature should I set my dryer at? A: I don’t know. That’s the best answer to that question. Another answer is to say, “whatever temperature raises the ink film temperature to 320 degrees for ten seconds.” Curing ink will be affected by the ambient temperature, how long your drying chamber is, the height…
Last week we ran a big Ink Kitchen list of reasons why you might not hold detail in your prints. My pals at Saati had a little more feedback. It is their usual type of feedback, helpful and practical. “First, make sure to run an exposure (cure) test and at least get into the range…
This question comes up often with screenprinters: why can we not hold detail? The answer is an idea similar to the art department concept of problems with source artwork where we say “garbage in, garbage out.” We are now are transferring that idea to print production. Basically, if you have a crappy stencil you have no chance…
We recently visited Anderson Studios in Nashville, TN. He has won more screenprinting awards than all of you readers put together. For printing the proof is not measuring dots or holding some line screen, the proof is what the prints look like. Andy Anderson’s prints are phenomenal and we’ll get into that in future posts.…
In the early days of my screenprinting we were totally operating blind. I didn’t even know there were shirts in printers folds and I bought thousands of bags of Hanes undershirts in three packs and in my basement “shop” I had giant stacks of cardboard and bags of plastic bags that I ripped open. We…
The humidistat photo comes from Andy Anderson’s darkroom. You would find something similar in ours at Mirror Image, both a similar device and most days (I hope) similar readings. As Summer is upon us in most of the country which means heat and humidity for most of us. As always keep your darkroom dark or…
