Printers have a bad habit of forgetting to heat their pallets before starting a print run. The underbase does not gel sufficiently and ink sticks to the back of the subsequent screens, chaos ensues. Start wiping screens. The result is that the first half dozen or more prints lack opacity and are grossly undersaturated, enough…
My good pal KC Hruby did the art on this piece. It is a great example of being creatively thinking about some artwork and how it can go on a shirt, instead of either just sticking existing artwork on a shirt, or even picking from an existing bunch of techniques. The artwork…
En honor al programa de TV de variedades Sábado Gigante bautizamos nuestros mensajes en español en The Ink Kitchen (La Cocina de Tinta) “Domingo Gigante!” Sábado Gigante es el show de TV en funcionamiento mas antiguo del mundo, 51 años y contando. Tiene una enorme audiencia en América del Norte y del Sur. El espectáculo…
I spent some time with the folks at Farm Fresh Clothing Co. in Sebastopol, CA yesterday. Great people, great printing, great ping-pong. Stay tuned for the full shop tour next week…
We printed this multicolor discharge print on the inside of the garment through a low mesh count and with a tremendous amount of squeegee pressure. As a result the ink saturates the substrate and bleeds clear through to the other side. What an easy way to take a clean spot color print and create a…
This week’s Throwback Thursday post– Our business of slinging ink is a sleazy one. The rag trade tends to the dishonest, the penny pinching, and the unethical. It has been mused that it came from the fact that screen printers historically plied their trade printing license plates in prison. I don’t buy that explanation, as…
Our friends at jakprints maintain a website that is the envy of apparel decorators everywhere. From humble beginnings (Jacob Edwards, Co-Founder, and I had fun one evening going back in time with the Wayback Machine), jakprints.com has developed into their primary customer interface. The site is filled with digestible information and interactive tools all presented in…
Our mate Joel Taylor is owner of PSI Screen Printing and he hales from Currumbin Waters in Queensland, Australia. His shop is not far from Brisbane, which is a long way from Long Beach, CA where Know-It-Alls Tom and Rick interviewed him for The Ink Kitchen during the recent ISS show. His wife luckily considers…
We recently had an order returned due to placement issues. The printing was “crooked and off-center”. Upon review of the returned goods we were able to ascertain the real issue… Torquing occurs in the manufacturing process and is most pronounced on non-tubular garments constructed from lightweight, stretchy fabrics (in this case a tri-blend). The difficulty…
In 2010 I called this post Hot Market Printing: Yankees (or Saints) Win! Same story this year really as we have another very good Quarterback Russell Wilson who was said to be too short. We have the same printer story as some shops in Seattle or Denver tonight on Superbowl Sunday who will be very…
