Week 43, 2014 – Make Cool Shirts, Phase One

Screenprinting Workspace

My Ryonet DIY Starter Press, bolted to table in the kitchen. With a 20×26″ t-shirt/sign platen, and 20×24″ 156 mesh screen.

Well, I finally got my ass in gear and started working on things. It wasn’t easy. The apartment is still congested, and I can’t get to anything (Seriously, you don’t even want to know what it looked like behind the camera, let alone in any other room.)

Before I give you a tour of the gear, lemme run you through a quick print I did.  This screen didn’t turn out well, it was under-exposed for whatever reason, but since I knew this wasn’t really a ‘keeper’, I mostly did this to buck myself up by doing something productive, as well as to show my mother– who had come by –the process (Not that she didn’t know, both my parents had been making silkscreens long before they’d made me), and finally, to take photos for a montage to use as banners on the MAKE COOL SHIRTS YouTube channel and Twitter account. Read more…

Week 40, 2014 – MAKE COOL…whats?

Hey, welcome back!  I’m still alive somehow!  First bit of news I have to report is that I’m almost to the point where I can begin commercially screenprinting!  Progress has been slow, because I’m still recovering from all the calamities that seem to befall me with alarming regularity. However, I’m close enough that it has warranted a domain purchase!  So, say hello to MAKE COOL SHIRTS!

In keeping with my usual shenanigans, I wanted the name to be tongue-in-cheek, so originally I was going to go with ‘Shirtstorm’. (Because, for starters, I thought the fact that it sounded like ‘shitstorm’ was funny… I am a simple creature.) And the logo would be a tornado of t-shirts… But apparently that name is already in use, so I said to hell with it.  ‘MAKE COOL SHIRTS’, using a t-shirt as the T literally came to me first thing in the morning, and by the end of the day I had the domain, and the domain had a splash-page with the logo.  Looking back now, it seems like the natural extension of this site, given that developing my ability to screenprint to such a degree was a direct result of my need to MAKE COOL THINGS.  :D

Second bit of news besides the fact that I’ve drastically expanded my screenprinting capabilities, is that I bought a sheet metal bending brake from Harbor Freight.  I’m going to detail all the screenprinting stuff in the next post, because I still have one more order coming in that actually serves to really enable my press.  I also haven’t even unboxed the brake yet, it arrived Friday, and it’s still all bagged and slathered in what I’ve come to call ‘slow-boat grease’, as it’s what anything rust-prone and Made In China arrives from Harbor Freight utterly drowned in… So that will have to wait for later, too.  I should note that I got it– and ordered some aluminium from ’80/20 Garage Sale’ on eBay –in preparation for making my own flash-drying unit for curing ink on the shirts, because a heat gun was not cutting it.

Go back to top