Press Performance

It's important to keep your equipment in good repair so I recently gave my printing press a tune-up. I scraped all the old adhesive, lint and ink off of it then I applied a fresh coat of adhesive. You could use a spray adhesive while you're screen printing but I hate spray adhesive. It's toxic and it can mess up your screens if any of the airborne adhesive drifts on to them. Plus it irritated my allergies. I prefer to use a spreadable adhesive called Table Tac. I also cleaned the hinges with some steel wool and then got some candle wax up in there to keep them from rusting. It's damp in that back room.

So shiny and fresh!

I wish I had a before shot of the press but I don't. Here it is all cleaned up.

I put these felt strips on the ends of the screen to keep the screen from resting on the press itself. This way the screen only comes into contact with the material I'm printing when I apply pressure with my squeegee. That helps with getting a sharper print. Raising the screen a little is called "offsetting".

Um... I used to forget to offset all the time but not anymore.

I also used to forget to lint roll, but not anymore.

I was making some green ink. Custom color!

My wife said the dishes pile looked pretty nice. I agreed and took a picture.

Here are towels waiting to be printed. The clothespins mark the center of the towel It's quite a pile I've got stacked up.