So after a week and a half of conflicting schedules, sickness, new jobs, and school starting, Caleb and Nick finally made it over to test our new equipment. We decided we were going to just try and do it based on our previous knowledge from past screenprinting, and that turned out to be a terrible idea. We put the emulsion on one screen and while that was drying in a darkened room Caleb, always anxious, started taping out a design for a personal shirt. He made the design rather quickly and we were all having a good time joking around. When we went to print his masking tape design, it didn’t come out right. We either put too much or not enough pressure on the screen and it came out as almost a ghost image. he then put down the arm for a second coat but he had moved the shirt slightly and it really just messed the whole thing up. As we were cleaning the paint and tape off the screen it was time to put the transparency down for the emulsion design. After we let that sit under some lights for about an hour we lifted the image and saw a pretty good image. However, when we went to wash it off to get ready to print the emulsion sort of just melted away in the detailed parts. We then ended up spending a good hour or so just cleaning up our mess.
Since then I have done some really good research and I think I saw where I went wrong. As I am typing this I have another screen coated with emulsion drying in my room right now. I am hoping that this attempt goes better. I will keep you all posted!
