Start Printing!

It’s a good idea to practice on a flat piece of wood first. You can use pegboard (without the holes) or something similar.  Or heavy paper, chipboard, whatever.  Place the object on your jig. Line up the frame so the image area is centered on the object. You can do it visually, but the best way to do it is to tape your film positive to the object and then line up the screen directly over the film positive, looking through from the top. If your screen is raised off the object press it down in various areas to check alignment, making sure you press straight down and aren’t pulling the screen to the side, distorting the image.  For one color designs this step isn’t as crucial.  When you have it placed right, tighten the clamps to secure the frame. Sometimes the frame will move during this process, so start lining it up with the clamps barely applying pressure to the frame.

Put the squeegee in the back of the screen, resting on the holder, and lower the frame. Pour some ink in front of the squeegee, maybe about a cup worth to get started. With the squeegee slightly tilted towards you, apply downward pressure and start to rake the ink towards your body in a smooth motion. You are going to be pushing the ink through the mesh, so you want to be consistent. You’ll notice that you have to apply pressure to get the screen to conform to the rounded edges of the concave, otherwise they outside edges won’t be scraped clean and the whole image won’t be printed, or the ink will collect on the bottom and bleed on the next board. You can minimize this by printing narrow graphics, but that’s not cool.

Concaves:

Actually, the side you’ll be dealing with is convex, but skaters only care about concaves. You’ll need to apply a lot of pressure on the squeegee, way more than is customary with traditional flat stock. Not only do you have to get  the squeegee to make contact with the center of the board, you’ll also have to try and get it to curve around the convex surface. You’ll be tempted to have the screen adjusted so that it is already making contact when at rest, but don’t do it. If you are printing anything more than one color, or anything with a lot of solid areas, the ink in the middle of the screen will not have anywhere to go except back in the screen. Basically you’ll get a good ink deposit on the edges and the middle will be faint to non-existent.  The convex bottom of the board is what is going to cause the majority of your printing errors. This is why you need a loose screen. The problem with a screen that is too loose is that they are hard to stretch evenly. A wavy wavy screen will in turn be hard to coat with emulsion evenly, making image exposure difficult or impossible. Loose screens are harder to clean and reclaim. They also stretch more when printing, which makes lining up your colors, called registration, hard or impossible. If only this was 1981 and everyone was riding flat shovels, your life would be a lot easier.

The way to get around the concave issue is to use a loose screen. We’ll talk about tip to tail graphics later. Screen tension is measured by a tension meter.  Ithey are sometimes called a newtonmeter, but they always cost something absurd like $300.  So what do I mean by loose? Assuming a machine stretched screen for manual printing is about 20 newtons, (a big assumption actually, I think that’s about average, but I could be wrong) I have found that a screen stretched to around 10 newtons works good. If you are scratching your head thinking WTF? that means half as tight as your average run of the mill over the counter stretched frame. If the guy at the shop looks at you like you are an imbecile, which he most likely will, tell him that it needs to be loose for the reasons I gave you. They may still insist that you are wrong, but most of these guys have absolutely zero experience in printing skateboards, and may even tell you it can’t be done. It’s like getting advice on how to do an invert from a rollerblader. The basic concept is the same but the advice comes from a complete kook. Believe me, I’ve gotten some wacky skateboard printing advice from some people who otherwise know their silkscreen shit. If you are stretching your screen yourself you won’t have to worry too much because you probably won’t be able to get it very tight to begin with.

Back to printing... Resist the urge to go back and forth on the screen because the fabric will stretch in the opposite direction, smearing the image. Try to maintain an angle with the squeegee so that the edge of the blade closest to you is the only part mking contact. Too steep or too shallow of an angle will give you a smeared print. It's pretty easy if you think about it, but it may not be entirely obvious. You are applyin gdownward pressure at the same time you are dragging the squeegee towards yourself, all the while maintaining the squeegee at the proper angle. The ink will lubricate the screen to help the squeegee move, so make sure you have enough when you start. After the first print stroke you are ready for what is called the flood stroke, which is where you drag the squeegee back towards the front of the image making just enough contact to leave a thin layer of ink covering the entire image area, but not enough to push through to the other side. If your ink is too thin you might be screwed and could possibly have to print on a piece of paper to clear the ink off.  The flood stroke serves two purposes; one to redistribute the ink so you can make another print, and the other to keep wet ink in the image and stop residual ink from drying in the image area.

Set the squeegee against the back and lift your screen up to check your work. If it isn’t perfect you can try lowering it and printing it again. Don’t sweat it. You are going to make a buttload of mistakes and will need to practice. Take your deck off the jig and set it somewhere clean to dry.  Start over with a fresh one. Learn on a small image and/or artwork that is not pristine so that mistakes won’t be as noticeable. As tired as it is, think grunge type. Congratulations. You are now part of the honorable brotherhood of skateboard printers.

Also, you will have the urge to print your first image on everything you own, any blank piece of clothing you own, including underwear, and every flat surface in your house. Don’t fight it. Just go with it. In 10 years you’ll pull a rag of a shirt out from under your couch cushion and you will be stoked to find your first print. A quick tip, if you are going to adopt your graphics to a shirt or two, get a small thin board to place on the inside and keep the shirt from wrinkling. Make sure you get it in one pass because the shirt will move once you lift the screen, unless you cover the board with spray tack.

Next Page: Reusing screens, multiple color designs and more.