Stencil and silk-screened T-shirts

jdrake, Dave Bird, William Barwell

From: jdrake_deja@my-dejanews.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Art Project: Tee Shirts
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 01:11:36 GMT
Message-ID: <6p0ps7$bqd$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>

Getting a tee shirt commercially screenprinted can be expensive in small
quantities. Of course, large quantities only save you money if you can use up
all the shirts.

But there is a simple way around this: The Stencil Shirt.

First off, you need some shirts. You can take old tee shirts and turn them
inside out, or purchase mens undershirts at your local cheap store. (If you
have already learnt how to stencil paint shirts, you could, of course, simply
spray over old shirts. But this is NOT suggested for newbies.)

What you need to do is to cut a stencil out of thin cardboard with a knife.
Cut holes where you want ink to go. Don't cut elsewhere. You know this.

Once you have the stencil, get some spray paint. Attach the stencil to the
shirt, and cover the rest of the shirt. Put it on the floor, preferably
outside. Get pretty far away from the shirt, and spray ONE LIGHT COAT of
paint on it. Don't saturate the shirt with paint. Just barely dust it.

You will probably ruin a few shirts before getting a good one. Perservere.
Shirts are cheap, information is precious. Before long, you'll be figuring out
how to make multi-color shirts this way.

ALTERNATE METHOD FOR THE COMPUTER GEEKS: Go to a sewing store or a stationery
store, and find some iron-on paper for use with your inkjet or laser printer.
It's expensive ($2 per sheet) but it can produce acceptable full-color
shirts, just in case you need to wear the Lisa autopsy photos to a protest,
or something.

jdrake SP2


incitement? moi?

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From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: Art Project: Tee Shirts
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 10:37:27 +0100
Message-ID: <SDxQewAXFGt1EwHC@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article <6p0ps7$bqd$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, jdrake_deja@my-
dejanews.com writes
>Getting a tee shirt commercially screenprinted can be expensive in small
>quantities. Of course, large quantities only save you money if you can use up
>all the shirts.
>
>But there is a simple way around this: The Stencil Shirt.
>
>First off, you need some shirts. You can take old tee shirts and turn them
>inside out, or purchase mens undershirts at your local cheap store. (If you
>have already learnt how to stencil paint shirts, you could, of course, simply
>spray over old shirts. But this is NOT suggested for newbies.)
>
>What you need to do is to cut a stencil out of thin cardboard with a knife.
>Cut holes where you want ink to go. Don't cut elsewhere. You know this.
>
>Once you have the stencil, get some spray paint.

 "Spay paint"?  It is probably not too expensive to buy "fabric paints"
 containing lightfast dye which colour every last fibre right through 
 the fabric and last as long as it does.  

 There are roughly two types of printing: a positive "transfer" on
 raised or roughened areas like spud printing, and a negative "soak
 through" using stencil cut out of paper or acetate film.  A silk
 screen simply separates the PATTERN (paper etc) from the STRENGTH
 of a stencil, the strength being an oblong of fine weave silk
 stretched over a wooden frame at the back---in this you put the 
 stencil pattern, then the ink, then run a rubber "sqeegee" down
 to soak one dose of ink through the silk onto the workpiece.
 The pattern can also be drawn or photographed in various ways
 onto the strengthener. Many different varieties of ink can
 be used for large paper posters, plastic surfaces, fabrics, etc.

 You can probably buy a screen for about ten dollars--the expensive
 part would be an A3sized photo negative and all the labour & materials
 of photgraphing a pattern onto it--which can be cleaned and reused
 for new patterns once you've finished with the old.  You probably 
 want it fitted with hinge and sping onto a flat table: this is
 handy for "automating" the process  a bit even if you only ever do
 one or two of each design.  Multiple colours almost certainly
 means multiple screens, unless you really do want to strip down and
 clean the same gear between different stencil+ink combinations.
 But if you are happy with two colours on the front, two screens 
 side by side would do the job nicely.  For small runs, you peg shirts
 up to dry using hangers on a washing line to dry same as you do with 
 photographic prints.  CAVEAT: I haven't done it, but I know how to.

 The method called "tusche" in the friendliest, where you paint on
 wax resist with a brush---glue is soaked into the silk where the
 wax ain't---then oilbased inks or dyes are stencilled through
 the holes in the glue after the wax is removed. Prices are very
 friendly this way as well...you make the gear and only ever buy
 two screens, which you look after.  Ink is cheap.  The cheif cost
 is your labour doing it.  You probably take two-dollar teeshirts
 and add 50cents worth of ink to them.  Why doesn't everyone do it?
 time, space, know-how, incovenience; if it was your job, you would
 have to price the labour realistically.

 

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From: Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: $cientology Kills Shirts Almost Ready! (WAS: "NEWBIES": Visit www.Scientology-Kills.net)
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 18:15:48 +0100
Message-ID: <+6z9bxBEDNK2EwFq@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article <708nrl$1qj$2@hirame.wwa.com>, Bloody Viking
<nospam@tekka.wwa.com> writes
>David Gerard <fun@thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>: A home screen-printing setup is not that expensive, not that difficult to
>: run and LOTS of fun, if you like lots of T-shirts and have lots of friends
>: who do too.
>
>It sounds like "not that expensive" is probably out of my budget to become
>Ray's manufacturer. I don't have _ANY_ friends in real life. How much does
>the T-Shirt machine cost anyways? I'm curious. 

 You will laugh how simple a "tee shirt machine" is.  Anybody
 who is reasonable at practical work with their hands can make
 printed tee-shirts.  Tee-shirts are cheap in packs of six,
 and the materials cost next to nothing per tee-shirt; the only
 question is how much of your time you want to put in which,
 if it was your living, you would have to price at a reasonable
 hourly rate.

 Printing techniques generally divide into "positive"
 ink-on-raised-area methods such as spud printing or 
 metal plate litho, and "negative" ink-through-stencil methods.
 A stencil can be made with a sharp scalpelblade and cutting
 out letter shapes in cartridge paper, sheet acetate, etc.
 Your "teeshirt machine" consists of the following:
 take a big stout table and hinge to the top surface a
 rectangular wooden frame a bit bigger than A4 paper size.
 Take some good finely-woven silk, not cheap tat, and thumbtack
 it stretched over bottom of the frame.  You will also need 
 a rubber squeegee the width of the frame.

 Put the fragile paper stencil in the bottom of the frame resting
 on the silk, and pour ink into the frame over the top ot it.
 Raise hinge, stick tee-shirt under, lower hinge, slap squeegee
 end to end down frame soaking a dose of ink through the silk.
 Raise hinge, remove teeshirt, next one. And, er, that's it.  


 Given a silk screen SUPPORTING the fragile stencil, it no longer
 needs to be its own strengthener.  You can paint on a stencil in glue
 (leaving holes where the ink is to go through). You can paint on
 wax resist, soak in glue which goes where the wax isn't, then
 remove the wax.  Or you can process it with photoresist and a 
 big negative of your artwork printed on acetate, the stencil
 has holes where the resist was unexposed. If you don't have a printer's
 camera then you either handmake the stencils, or pay $10 an artwork
 for the photographic blowups.

 How do you do three colours?  Three frames, three stencils, three inks;
 let the tee-shirts dry from one pass to the next so they don't smear.
 You can silk screen on almost any surface there's an ink or glue(#) for
 [(#)flock wallpaper: print patterns of glue, scatter fluff or 
 glitter which sticks where the glue is and not where it isn't].
 You probably want a bunch of different screens and a rack to keep
 them on...also a sort of clothes-horse thing to place individual
 tee-shirts while they dry between colours. Nothing very hard here.


                                            |~/           |~/
~~|;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;||';-._.-;'^';||_.-;'^'0-|~~
P |      Woof Woof, Glug Glug               ||____________||      0  | P
O |   Who Drowned the Judge's Dog?          | . . . . . . . '----. 0 | O
O |         answers on                  *---|_______________  @__o0  | O
L |{a href="news:alt.religion.scientology"}{/a}_____________|/_______| L
and{a href="http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk/clam/lynx/q0.html"}{/a}XemuSP4(:)

From: Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: $cientology Kills Shirts Almost Ready! (WAS: "NEWBIES": Visit www.Scientology-Kills.net)
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 02:27:23 +0100
Message-ID: <HTsjhmC7PUK2EwQf@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article <70au03$ana$2@hirame.wwa.com>, Bloody Viking
<nospam@tekka.wwa.com> writes
>Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>:  You will laugh how simple a "tee shirt machine" is.  Anybody
>:  who is reasonable at practical work with their hands can make
>:  printed tee-shirts.  Tee-shirts are cheap in packs of six,
>:  and the materials cost next to nothing per tee-shirt; the only
>:  question is how much of your time you want to put in which,
>:  if it was your living, you would have to price at a reasonable
>:  hourly rate.
>
>Oops, I forgot about manual methods! :) Thanks for the clues. 

 Indeed. I've never seen "machine methods."  When I was in a factory
 and we were making printed circuit boards with a silk screen 
 process (to print the component names and shapes in white on the
 finished PCB) the silkscreen line consisted of just the above stuff,
 half a dozen guys at a workbench with hinged frames that went up
 and down.  Especially with fabric tee-shirts etc which need to 
 be loaded in straight by hand, there's nothing you can mechanise.


                                            |~/           |~/
~~|;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;||';-._.-;'^';||_.-;'^'0-|~~
P |      Woof Woof, Glug Glug               ||____________||      0  | P
O |   Who Drowned the Judge's Dog?          | . . . . . . . '----. 0 | O
O |         answers on                  *---|_______________  @__o0  | O
L |{a href="news:alt.religion.scientology"}{/a}_____________|/_______| L
and{a href="http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk/clam/lynx/q0.html"}{/a}XemuSP4(:)

From: wbarwell@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (William Barwell)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: $cientology Kills Shirts Almost Ready! (WAS: "NEWBIES": Visit www.Scientology-Kills.net)
Date: 17 Oct 1998 16:02:36 -0500
Message-ID: <70b0lc$ku4$1@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>

In article <708nrl$1qj$2@hirame.wwa.com>,
Bloody Viking  <nospam@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
>David Gerard <fun@thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>: A home screen-printing setup is not that expensive, not that difficult to
>: run and LOTS of fun, if you like lots of T-shirts and have lots of friends
>: who do too.
>
>It sounds like "not that expensive" is probably out of my budget to become
>Ray's manufacturer. I don't have _ANY_ friends in real life. How much does
>the T-Shirt machine cost anyways? I'm curious. 
>
  
Depends on how handy you are.
Basically, a silk screen is just that, silk over a frame.
A multi-color system uses several frames, and a set up to keep
the frames and shirts perfectly aligned during printing.
Plus chemicals, a light system, ect.
Depends on if you are doing a one color shirt or how many shirts
you are doing.  I estimate about $300 would put one on the road to
full blown T-Shirt production.  You'd need to assemble frames,
a production table with jigs, T-Shirt forms, drying tables,
a small darkroom set up, much of which one could make.

Check your local art supply store for more info.

Pope Charles
SubGenius Pope Of Houston
Slack!