Silkscreening wood?

Plastisol is the common textile ink but has to be heat cured, about three minutes. There are others but… I have used dye sublimation to put prints onto wood and it involves doing a reverse print on your printer, (computer printer) and then using heat, (a textile press or an iron) to activate the dye turning it into a gas that pushes into the wood. You can achive very detailed results this way but the colors are not as rich as a regular ink or acrylic paint. No silk screen? ...use panty hose stretched over a wood frame.

-- Never board, always knotty, lots of growth rings

Ive screened wood before but for a painting. My brother had a Tshirt shop competing with my wood shop for the garage He just used Tshirt ink. It hat to be heat cured so my piece had to be put under the heat. I printed on it post staining and pre poly.

Plastisol was the kind of ink and the heat cure time was 330degrees for 30 seconds. I had some peeling issues on the practice peices but I was pretty rough with it.. the finished product was good but was a wall piece not a shuffle board. Other than that it was easy.

I am by no means an expert but thats what I did. Practice on scrap a few times and figure out the best way to do it. This ink was slightly raised but like 1/64th or less. Making the screen was the hardest part.

I used to do screen printing in the 80’s & 90’s and will agree that plastisol is probably the best bet. How many do you need to do? Just the one? Something you might think about, rather than stretching pantyhose nylons on a frame is a cheap screen printing kit from Speedball. They’re mainly for the home craft people who can’t afford or don’t need something elaborate, to do their own screen printing at home. Most any art supply store will carry these, roughly @ $50 +/-. You may even find another use for the kits afterwards, making it a decent little investment.

-- Respect your shop tools and they will respect you - Ric

I have used these screens many times with great results. You can expose them in direct sunlight in 50 seconds, and you don’t need to buy emulsion, and all that stuff that adds up very quickly.

-- Julian, Park Forest, IL

Thanks for the good advise. Does anyone know how to do multiple colors? The more I look into this the more I am thinking we are going to create a emblem to place on our finished projects. This might require more than one color. Anyone know of a good website for emblems, designs, etc.?

Multiple colors are done by making a separate screen for each color. You apply the ink one color at a time with a flash cure between each.

then you have to worry about registration and such. If you really want to do something work with a printing company, they should have the stuff to do it right for you.

-- If you can't build it, code it. If you can't code it, build it. But always ALWAYS take a picture.

Mr Wintercoats, what is a flash cure?