How To Build A Cheap T Shirt Screen Printing Press !!!

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I am going to show you how to build a screen printing press out of scrap wood
and just a little bit of hardware. I mean this is kinda stuff you can find lying on the side of
the road. How To Build A Cheap T Shirt Screen Printing Press !!! From people renovating houses.
A couple pieces here are old window trim. There's a
and a piece of plywood.
Just add a little bit hardware that costs
almost nothing and you've got a screen printing press. I'm going to show you how to build it.
The first thing I am going to do is, I'm going to make the parts for the clamps that hold on to the screen.
I don't know how long this is. Maybe
cheap postcard printing I'm not going to use the whole thing.
I'm going to rip it down to about two and a half inches wide
So that's the first thing I am going to do.
Okay I got my miter saw here. The first thing I am going to do is cut off this
little diagonal end here so I have a flat end.
There's that. And now I cut about two
inch
pieces of this board here.

And nothing needs to be super exact here. You can modify
it with whatever you've got. I'm going to use that to
measure the next part here. So there, I've got my
two
inch pieces for my a
screen clamp. I've got my
here. The
is about
Whish is a little longer I really need but that's okay. I
wanna leave it
long
cuz I wanna have a little bit extra to clamp with.
What I am going to do is cut a


Just like that.
Okay, I've got this other piece of wood here.
It's about seven and a half inches wide which is actually...
I only really need about seven inches but that extra half an inch is not going to be
a big deal.
This needs to be about
inches long as well.
So what we will do is mark it at


Make it longer than I really need it.
This is my nice clean end over here
so I'm going to go ahead and cut off the other end right at

inches and that's
right there. Again this stuff really doesn't need to be that exact.
So just approximately. Just
clean it up, make it a little nicer.
Okay. That looks about right.

Okay now I gotta make the shirt board which
I'm going to cut out about
inch by
inch
square out of this.
Not sure which side I am going to use.
This side has a little bit of paint on it.
This side doesn't have paint on it but it's got a few little knots in
it. So I think I am going to go ahead and use
this side then maybe just kind of sand down

the paint a little bit. Got some screw holes here
screw holes there, but I am not that worried about the screw holes though.
So I am going to go ahead
most of the screws holes are on that side
so I am going to go ahead and use this side
so I go
inches there
by
inches there, that minimizes most most of the screw holes.
so
here. Get a square here.
I've got my circular saw here. I've got some pieces of wood underneath there raising
this off the ground.
I am going to go ahead and cut this
down.

That's
inches
So now I am going to go ahead and cut
inches this way.
So now I am going to cut this. I drew a second line there.
Okay now I am going to go ahead and put some little
angles up here on the end. So first thing I'l do is
measure that. That's


inches. So half of that
would be
(actually
Come down each side maybe
let's do two and a half inches on
each side. Not exact stuff here.
Two and a half inches.
Draw a line from there down to here. Draw a line down from here.
So I've got an angle there
for the shirt to fit over. So I am just going to go ahead and cut these.



Went a little be wider than that.
Again it's not that important. There's that.
Just to clean the surface up a little bit
I'm going to run an orbital sander over it.


Okay, just a rough to smooth down those paint
marks especially. I may fill these with a little bit of
putty of some sort. Okay, the next thing
do is mount the shirt board
onto the
here. I turned the
shirt board upside down, so now this is the bottom of the shirt board.
The rough side. And I have the
here so I have the angled
part right there. I want to center it
approximately. So about
And about

Six and a quarter there. Six and a quarter there. That looks good that way.

and it should be pretty close up here.
About
And I am just going to go ahead and mark the board right there where the shirt board ends. I'm going to drill
three holes into here
and put the screws in through the

into the shirt board so that the surface of the shirt board where the shirt will
lay is going to stay smooth. I've got some two inch screws
which will go through the
and into the shirt board
but not through the shirt board. I've got a drill bit that's a little smaller diameter than this
the screw and I am going to put three
holes through here.


Okay
Screw this on here.


Be careful not to screw them in
so far they come out of the surface of the shirt board.
Okay now we need to attach to clamp board
here which is this seven and a half inch by

inch board there. There should be about a
six inch space between the shirt board
clamp board. So I am going to go ahead and mark that
there. You want it centered
approximately on there. Since it's
inches long.

inches
right there. Center that approximately.
We're going to drill a couple holes
through here for the screws. So just
two right in the center here.

Lets do a couple more, what the heck.

There we go.
Center that on there. And we want it straight.
And we use the same
two inch screws on this as well. Put these in there.




Okay, so now I have the two pieces, the boards to make the clamp with.
What I am going to do is lay them flat right on top of each other.
And I bought these bolts.
They're
inch bolts and
they're about
inches long and I have a washer and a wing nut.
And so they will go through there. Now I have a drill
this is just very slightly larger diameter
then the bolt. So what I am going to do is lay these down flat
and about an inch from the end here
I'm gonna drill a hole straight down through both boards
trying to keep it straight as possible.
And it's through there. And then do the other side.


Okay, now I am going to take one of the flat pieces
and just lay it side by side this other clamp board here.
And I have a piece
of strip hinge here.
This is just what I had. You can also use like two or
three smaller hinges. But I have the strip hinge, so that's what i am going to use.
and I'm just basically lay it down here.
First what I am going to do is just go ahead and put it
connect it on one side there
and put this part down so that I know it's
exactly straight with this board here.
Okay now with this strip hinge
laid right up there I'm going to go ahead and put in some of these screws
I don't need to put in all the screws just
probably like every other hole or so




And that should be enough
and now
I'm going to go ahead and stick
the clamp part here and bring it flush
up against this base part
and then put some of these screws in.


Okay, now this should move up nice smooth like that
I take the other
part of the clamp right there and make sure that the holes line up
on there with the bottom. Take one of these bolts
stick it up through the bottom there Put the washer there.
And then the wing nut. Same thing with the other side here.

Like that.
Okay, here's like one of the screens I like to use here.
This is an aluminum frame screen and it's

How this works is

put the screen, slide it here
and part of the problem is these little
parts of these bolts haven't bitten into the
the back part of the board. So I will go ahead and push this in
and then clamp these down and let the back end of the
bolts bite into the wood on
the backside here.

Just clamp these down real tight.
And those will bite in.
Okay, now I can go ahead and loosen these a little bit.
So I just go ahead and slide this screen into
where I want it to be.
And it will go down until it hits
the hinge there. I don't really need to have it all that far in there
And what you can do is slide a t shirt
on to the shirt board and line up
where you want this design hit on the t shirt, and clamp these down.
it will hold it straight. And then you go ahead and lift this up like this.
Okay, we're not done yet. What we're going to do is,
we want to hook up something that will hold the screen up while we're not actually
printing the shirt.
And we actually have to physically push it down and then it will come back
up. So what we are going to do is we hook like a little bit of a spring system
here.
So right in the middle here
I'm going to drill, I have a small little hole...
or drill, and I have these little eye screws.
and so I have a a small drill bit. I just going to
drill like a pilot hole here, in there.
and then also back here, I'll drill one in.

Now with some vice grips here.
Clamp these on a little tighter. Use this to go ahead and screw the
the eye screw in. One there.
And one here.

Okay, now this spring is just too strong
to really reach between both of those screws.
So what I am going to do is hook it on one side
I'm going to use the...there.
Get it on this one here. And then I have a zip tie.
So what I am going to do is go ahead and use the zip tie
and put this through here like this.
And then I can tighten this. I go ahead and
pull this back. Tighten this.
and then adjust it to where it's going to hold the screen up to where I want it to be.
And then I can just physically push it down
and it'll come back up. Tighten it just a little bit more.
Okay, here's the finished screen printing press.
I have it mounted to a kitchen table just using a C-clamp here.
You can also drill a hole in the
and screw it down to a work bench, if you've got
one around.
I just have this hanging off the end of the
the table. To use it just take it t-shirt
slide it on to the shirt board.
Get it all straightened up.
It helps to look at the grain of the shirt. And you can make sure the the grain of the
shirt is side by side, and you can feel the sides of the shirt to make sure they are
even on each side. You can also spray a little bit of
spray adhesive on to the shirt board so that it
becomes sort of sticky and will actually hold the shirt in place when you go to print it.
To go ahead and use it, put the ink on the screen
drop it down. Squeegee it on. Lift it back up.
Pull the shirt off. If you don't have complete coverage, one of the nice things about a screen printing
press
is it's going to hold the screen in the exact place where you want it.
Drop it down, Squeegee it again. Lift it up and hopefully then you have a nice image on the shirt.
Anyway this is...you can't build a screen printing press much cheaper than this.
Its great for doing like hobby printing
or you could even do a small business with this
for almost like nothing to start a small business printing
T-shirts You could actually even build your own
frames and I may do a video on that.
That's how to build a cheap screen printing press. *** ***