Glad it helped you. As my beginning students start screen printing again for the first time, I am reminded of how difficult it can be for them. Simple things like the angle of the print and flood stroke, the amount of pressure applied when printing and the viscosity of the ink among others can make a big difference in your results. Only experience printing lots of stencils can teach you what should feel right. I tell my kids I will make it look very easy but it won't be for them.

PS - I have my own channel (bookmaking and box making) and I've always been curious about why people leave me comments. I never leave comments. But now I have, and I finally get it - when someone helps you with something you've been struggling with again and again, it requires thanks! 😘

@@KristiWarrenHandmadeBooks Thanks so much for your kind words and I'm glad this helped you too. I also never leave comments but do SO appreciate all the people that generously put up videos and pdfs that help people. Making and posting videos was always a thought but it was WAY down on my to-do list; I probably never would have done so without the need to do so for my students during pandemic teaching. I'm always surprised by how many other people outside of my classes that I am helping.

Glad you found this and it helped you. This is perhaps the number one problem my students have when they are learning to screen print.

Glad it was helpful!

Happy you could benefit from my pandemic videos for my students; the videos have been one of those things I always meant to do and never got around to it. It's pretty gratifying that others are benefitting from these too. I appreciate all the positive comments.

Yes. If the ink is too runny it will bleed more easily. A stencil with small details that keep filling in (bleeding) or an ink that is not the right consistency (too loose) may mean that I skip the flood stroke and just use a print stroke to solve the issue when I am in the middle of printing. It is rare but I have had to use this method before. I ave even ad to wipe the screen underneath after every pull if the run is short and I can't alter the ink. Adding a bit of extender base to Speedball ink can thicken the ink without making it too transparent.

I have little experience with plastisol inks using it only a few times in the past. My inclination would be to use the same technique first by dry wiping the stencil. Wiping with the remover may wet or lubricate the stencil and perhaps cause another bleed by pulling more ink under the screen in the next pull. When we dry wipe it with water-based ink, we are removing ink from the underside that would tend to pull more ink under the stencil as well as remove the ink that could make a stain on the paper where the bleed was. Many years ago I learned on oil based ink and had to do things a bit differently when I transitioned to water-based. Rarely will I need to wipe with a damp sponge and generally for a problem with the ink (dry bits in the ink that get stuck in the fabric mesh primarily). After a damp wipe, I will do a dry wipe afterward to remove the moisture in the mesh that will make a mark during the next pull. In your case, If you would need to use the remover to wipe the screen, then I would follow with a dry wipe too. Having said all this, I could be wrong as plastisol may act differently. Experiment and see what happens.

This is true and it will help reduce or stop bleeds but it also means there are other issues to consider. The higher mesh count will reduce the amount of ink going down on the substrate, which means a thiner layer of ink and a potentially lighter color overall. This change in your ink color will be more noticeable with more transparent colors. The bigger issue is that cleaning out the ink and more importantly, cleaning out the stencil can be more difficult. You have to be very thorough about using emulsion remover and not let the emulsion set in the screen for a long time. I clean it out right after I am done printing with a higher mesh (our mesh is typically 195 lpi.) Even jumping up to 255 lpi you will see a difference. It does mean greater possible detail (smaller size printable mark) - water based Ink can also dry in those smaller areas more quickly, blocking out those marks so they no longer print (if you don't notice it or correct it). All in all, for most students, going up in mesh counts is more problems than it is worth.

This is water-based ink. I would imagine this same method works for plastisol, solvent based ink though. I first learned on oil based ink where bleed could be solved with a newsprint wipe before reapplying a flood stroke.

I recorded this with half of my class in the room watching the demo while one of them filmed it for me. Not that it's really of any consequence or importance to the content of the video. You only see what the camera sees, which is never the whole story...

Well, if you had actually paid attention as you watched you'd notice that someone is recording him (and they respond to him) and then someone else walks by, so... no, he is not the only one there. Maybe you're watching the wrong kind of video if this was your take-away. 😬😃