cracks in my stencil...

1441 Views 9 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Fauxfax, Jul 22, 2010

SunnyBlack

Discussion Starter · Jul 14, 2010

hows everyone doing tonight?
in the beginning, learner's process right now.
had many mishaps along the way so far...

my newest problem is this:

coated my screen, let it dry, burned the image, washed it out.

now the stencil has cracks in it. when i say cracks, the image has lines that cant be washed out...looks like lightning bolts of emulsion running thru the washed out parts.

could this be from lack of shadow underneath the screen and glass (ie: need to put the black shirt thats under the screen closer to the screen?) or from high humidity (im printing in my garage, in Virginia, and its awfully humid out here) ???

what are common reasons for the burned image to wash out with tiny cracks in it? for the most part, the image washes out, but like i said, its like small lightning bolts running thru the lettering.

i printed with it a second ago and it didnt seem to matter too much, but thats on a cheesy tshirt...not for a client.

what are yalls thoughts?

i didnt think overexposure was an issue (14" up, 500 watt halogen, 11 min., speedball diazo emulsion with sensitizer mixed in) and my film positive doesnt show any cracks in it.

have a good night yall.
peace.

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Fauxfax

· #2 · Jul 14, 2010

If you don't fully expose the emulsion then the surrounding emulsion can run into the open parts. So - for instance - you underexpose the screen and the parts you want wash out fine but then you leave it to dry and the wet emulsion runs down over the holes blocking them.
Other than that - are there any scratches on your cover-glass that could be affecting the exposure - or on the acetate.

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pyrophire

· #3 · Jul 14, 2010

Those lines would be emulsion suds/residue from not completely washing out the screen after a short exposure.

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SunnyBlack

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jul 14, 2010

the glass is fine and so is the acetate.
the cracks appeared immediately as i was washing out. it def wasnt emulsion running down - these arent drip marks or streaks.
they look like what a really old john belushi "college" shirt would look like if you used ****ty ink and washed it a bunch of times. cracks everywhere.
but in this case, it looks like the area i washed out has cracks in it.

pyrophire:
you say that its emulsion that didnt get completely washed out...
my concern is with the immediacy of the cracks appearing. i washed the screen out for a long time trying to get these lines out - like fifteen minutes with a pretty strong spray from the hose. but the cracks showed with the first letter i washed out and repeated the whole time. im talking about one minute in and the cracks were there as the rest of the emulsion was gone and i could see thru the stencil.

i have a garden nossil attached and i put it on "jet" setting - it sprays pretty hard.

i wonder if im not explaining as well as i could be.

it didnt take but five minutes to get the main image washed out...the rest of the time was devoted towards trying to get the lines out of the image.

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Fauxfax

· #5 · Jul 14, 2010

Are you not maybe talking about the ghost of a previous image? You can often see the ghost of the previous image but it doesn't have any effect on the print.

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