Your next step is to prepare a silkscreen.

A silkscreen is polyester mesh that is stretched very tight and glued to either a wooden or metal frame. This silkscreen is 19" x 21" and is made of wood (available for under $20.00 most anywhere in the country). The life of a screen depends on the care given. You can coat the wood with water protective material when you get them and they will last for well over 5,000 prints (your cost becomes less than 1 cent per print). Once you are done with an image you can remove it and place a new one on the same screen. The mesh that is used comes in different mesh sizes i.e. 110 mesh count is 110 holes per square inch and 300 mesh count is 300 holes per square inch. The more holes, the finer the detail your print can be and the less holes, the more coarse the print must be.

You must coat the screen with photo sensitive emulsion. I am using a pre-mixed emulsion (available for around $25.00 per quart). I am applying it with a tool called a screen coater (troth like tool with a handle). You pour the emulsion in to the screen coater and spread it evenly onto both sides of the screen. With the same tool, scrape all excess emulsion off the screen. Emulsion is sensitive to ultraviolet rays, so when using it, you must NOT have sunlight, florescent, or halogen lighting turn on in the room where you are working. You can have a bug light (yellow) or even a regular incandescent light bulb on while you are working with it.

To dry the emulsion on the screen you can take a house hold fan and place it with the screen in a dark area and let sit for about 45 minutes to an hour. The above pictures are lit up so we could video the scene. Most people build a box to hold about 10 screens with a small fan that attaches to the outside of the box blowing air through the inside and drying the screens.

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