This past Friday was an oddly satisfying day but also more physical than I had imagined. Generally when an artist sets up a screen for screen printing it’s one, maybe two or three screens at a time. With more modern screen printing equipment stretching a screen is more simple and easy than it used to be.

Old style screens were stretched in the same way as a canvas, well somewhat. The silk (polyester actually) is loosely stretch over a frame with a heavy polyester tape (more like a heavy duty ribbon) under it and another over the top of that. Staples were carefully placed through the tape the whole way around the screen. The screen was then heated with a heat gun or hair dryer to shrink it tight.

This isn’t a bad process when you are doing one or two screens. 

When you need to rip apart and put back together enough screens for a whole group of kids and then you and your coworker decide to rip the screens off all the damaged and clogged up screens together, well, that’s a HUGE endeavor.

Together my coworker and I stripped down something like 30 screens. I stretched 9 of them on my own with a less than traditional staple only method. and I have 5 more than use a spline in a groove method that I’ll stretch in the upcoming days. However I don’t need those all ready for today and  can do one a day instead of all of them at once. 

If you’ve never stretched a canvas, the method for silk screens is something like this: Cut fabric to size. Secure one edge with a staple. Opposite that, pull the screen taught but not too tight, staple. Repeat process on 2 remaining sides. Pick a side pull snug, staple 3 to 4 time, rotate screen, repeat, continue until you are at the corners, place 2 to 3 staples across the corners. If staples protrude at all, hammer them down.  After all that, run a hair dryer or heat gun over the screen until it feels tight. It should kinda make noise like a drum. A flat drum but a drum. It can take 20 minutes a screen.

Exhausting. I have spent the weekend recovering. It also highlights that I’m out of shape again and really need some quality time on my bike.

I am switching over to a PVC pipe method that uses regular 3/4 inch schedule 40 PVC pipe cut to size and then fit into regular PVC corners. Screen is fixed to the pip with hoop house clips and clamps. Screen is tightened by rotating the clips.

My goal is to never clean out a screen from either screen filler or photoemulsion ever again. I always have problems getting it all out and the screen is always ruined anyway. This way I can rip the screens off and give them to the kids when they are done with their projects. Easy.