Preparing to print:

When the screen is fully dry to touch and not tacky you are ready to tape it. With clear packing tape you want to make a creased piece of tape that covers inside edges of the frame, completely covering any uncoated areas of the screen (except for your art – duh!) If you cover more of the frame edge it will also make it easier to clean off any ink spills. Hold your dry screen up to a light (or the sun) again to look for pinholes. These are tiny little holes in the emulsion caused by dust or other crap in your screen. If you don’t want tiny dots all over your board, make sure you tape these off from behind. Packing tape or even invisible “scotch” tape will work. Make sure you apply it flat on the bottom with now folded over edges or wrinkles. If you need to wipe off the bottom of your screen during printing (not unusual) the ink will collect in the wrinkles and transfer to your board.  An alternative to taping pinholes is to use a tiny paintbrush and special blockout formula or even emulsion, and just dab it on the pinhole. Even Elmer’s glue  will work for low volumes. Then wait for the screen to dry. Technically, if you use emulsion you’ll have to expose it to UV again once it’s dry to make sure it stays.  Just setting it in the sun to dry will be enough. Try not to put a thick drop on your screen.

Choosing An Ink:

Solvent or water based inks? Screen supply stores will tell you to use a general solvent based ink. Most of them only know about water based inks for textiles, which will not work for you because they won’t adhere to the board. (Actually, I‘ve never tried it with textile inks. Maybe it does work, but I doubt it.) There are water based “graphic” inks out there, but they are hard to find and most supply counter guys know nothing of them. Naz Dar series 2700 is a popular one to use, but I have heard and seen first hand reports of the ink flaking off after it dries. Fortunately, it appears to be intermittent and rare. The other problem with 2700 hundred series aside form expense for the casual user, is the limited variety of colors. Solvent based inks are more durable, but are a bitch to clean and can be annoying to print with. Make sure you work in a well ventilated  area or you will get headaches and your children will be born with flippers. Water based inks are easy to clean, but they are hard to find, a bitch to get them to adhere to the skateboard, and will require a water resistant emulsion for extended use. 

Inks have counterparts called extenders and retarders. Extenders work kind of like a thinner, thinning the ink out and making it easier to print with. Retarders (say it out loud. It’s funny!) are supposed to make the ink dry a little slower, or at least that is my understanding. If you have a bunch of ink in your screen, eventually it will start to dry up and clog the image area. Be careful when adding extenders and retarders because you can easily add too much. I’ve had inks that were thinned down too much, and looked good when they were printed, but when the solvents evaporated there wasn’t enough pigment to cover the image, and the print ended up looking like a crackled dessert floor.  You might be tempted to thin with whatever solvent you are using for cleanup. This will work if used sparingly, but you also run the risk of what is called “crazing.” No, it’s not some bizarre fraternity initiation right involving crail grabs. Crazing is when an already dried ink or color of board starts to dissolve in the ink of the color you are currently printing, eventually clogging up the image area and mixing with the current ink, making it a new color and generally causing you to swear profusely.  If that’s not enough, when it’s really hot outside, like summertime, when your most likely to be interested in printing skateboards, the ink will have a tendency to dry up in your screens as you print. Have fun with that. If you are not climate controlled you’ll have to print in the dead of the night or early morning when it’s cool.

Set Up the Printing Area:

You’ll need some hinges with clamps on them. They cost about $20 but are worth buying if you are going to print more than once or twice.  You can make your own, but it’s not really worth it. If this is a one time thing you can try just using a door hinge and actually screwing it into the frame, which isn’t a good idea because it will trash your frame and make position adjustments a pain in the ass. Basically you need something that hinges keeps the frame from moving but still allows you to lift the frame to load the object you want to print into place. Thomas Edison types can try your hand at inventing a new system, but the hinge clamp is the safe bet. Automatic presses use pneumatic pressure or electric motors.

You’ll also need something to hold the printed object in place. If you are printing flat stock, that can be as simple as the table top and the weight of the object.  Sometimes spray tack or a vacuum table, which is like an air hockey table that sucks down instead of blows out.  In the case of a skateboard your best bet is to use a piece of wood with some mounting hardware that sticks up where the truck hole patterns are.  Make sure they don’t stick out more than the thickness of the deck or they will poke holes in your screen when you print them. You might want to file down the threads a little too. If you want to get fancy you can use some dowel rods and round off the tips by sanding them to make placing the board easier.  The board has to be raised up enough so that it sits solidly without rocking when pressure is applied. If you are using the same concave board over and over, you can use an actual skateboard.  This will provide a perfect base for setting the deck and save you the headache of trying to drill the holes correctly. Update: See this page for more detailed information on building a rig for printing skateboards.

The screen, when in the clamps and held level, should be raised off the surface of the skateboard by 1/8 inch or so. (Some people will disagree and say you need more or less separation. Sometimes you can get a good print with the screen laying directly on the object that gets printed. The idea of raising the screen off the object is to provide a minimal contact area and crisper print. The fabric will stretch a little as you pull the squeegee across, and if the entire screen is making contact then it can smear the image as you print. Too much distance between the object and the screen and you won’t be able to get a clean consistent contact, or your ink will bleed through. There are some screen clamps hinges that have adjustable heights, but they cost more. You can achieve the same results by shimming the frames. If you are going to try and keep the screen raised a little, you’ll need a block of wood or something at the opposite end of the hinges to keep the frame from hitting the board when you aren’t holding it.  Always put your clamp on the frame edge with the narrowest dimension, (nose or tail of the board).  Printing against the grain doesn’t work well and will require a longer squeegee.

The Squeegee:

Get a regular clamp or something else attached to the back of the screen to rest your squeegee on while you are loading the board or otherwise not printing.  This will keep the squeegee from falling into the ink in the frame and will also keep you from getting fingerprints all over your boards.  Tape the squeegee in the same manner that you did for the frames, covering where the rubber meets the wooden handle. This will make it easier to clean. Otherwise, ink will seep into the cracks and can be impossible to clean. Imagine how bummed you will be when after printing with red ink one day, you decide to print with red ink the next, and slowly but surely, your apparently clean squeegee will start to turn the ink pink as the new white ink starts to mix with and dissolve the red ink in the cracks of the squeegee. This will actually happen. You could buy a squeegee for every color, but while you’re at it you might as well win the lottery too.  Squeegees are bought by the inch as well, same as with scoop coaters. The hardness can vary, and some have rounded edges for pushing more ink through. Stiffer ones tend to be used for higher detail work.  Heck, they even sell squeegee sharpeners. Don’t try to use the squeegee from your day job washing windows. It ain’t going to work.  Just as a comparison, a quick web search found a plastic handled squeegee  at $6.60, wooden handled at $14.75, and a custom one at $2.49 an inch. I’m going to gloss over the squeegee questions right now by saying I still haven’t figured out what the best width and hardness is for a skateboard. You’ll need it to be a little wider than the board at least. How much is still a guess to me. I’ve been using a medium hardness squeegee (I think they can be measured in durometers for the truly anal, but most places will also have generic soft, medium , and hard squeegees. You are going to be applying some pressure to the squeegee, so the cheapo plastic handle route may not last you very long. I’ve never tried one though. You’re going to have to push the fabric around the concave of the skateboard.  A super soft squeegee will be to mushy and won’t hold  a clean edge. A super hard squeegee might not press enough ink through.  I don’t know for sure yet. I’ll have to test some more.

Next Page: Start Printing!