Finn helped me print some T-shirts last night, and they came out really well!
The ink is going on a little unevenly, so I need to work on my pressure and technique. I also think I need a finer mesh screen for greater detail; the one I bought premade is a little chunky for my taste. But I picked up some blue and white ink on sale as well as some more screen material at Utrecht, so I can start building and stretching some more screens for new designs.
My lovely wonderful wife bought me this as part of my birthday present:
Doing a little more research, I found that the Dugan’s brand was brewed from the early 30’s up until 1963-4 in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and then until 1966 in Rhode Island. At one time, there was an ale, a bock, and a special lager.
I think I’m going to have to recreate this label. Oh, yes.
The last time I did any screenprinting on my own was back in High School, when Mr. Haruch showed us how to cut acetate with an X-Acto knife and burn it in with acetone. It was time-consuming and delicate work, especially for complicated images. Once I’d mastered that process, I ran with it. I made band T-shirts and custom designs for friends. I experimented with 4-color registration to run prints of the Watchmen smileyface button. I was also thinking as an entrepreneur: I created two designs and sold them on T-shirts to help finance a marching band trip to Disney World.
This is my first time working with photo emulsion, so I’m being very careful and taking notes. On Monday evening, I mixed up the emulsion, painted a screen, and set it out to dry. Last night I set up a basic light stand and burned the design in.
I had to guess at the exposure time, but it seemed to work well. After an hour’s wait, I had a screen with two designs ready: one kid-sized and one adult-sized. This weekend I’m going to hit the Target for some inexpensive shirts and get to printing.
From The Truth About Cars, a great article about the VW Harlequin (1996 Golf).
At its core, the Golf Harlequin was, quite simply, a multi-colored Volkswagen Golf manufactured only for the 1996 model year. But, like most things in the car world – and everything in the Volkswagen world – there’s a lot more to it than that.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
The Daily Viz is a weblog devoted entirely to data visualization. Each day the author finds and posts a new chart or graphic, some found, some created. Fascinating stuff.
I picked up some black screenprinting ink from Utrecht this afternoon and got to work setting up a stand for burning screens in the ice room. This is the first time I’ve used photosensitive emulsion instead of cutting acetate, so I’m a little nervous about the process. I mixed up emulsion and applied it to the screen after blacking out the window. Last week I had Kinko’s print up the first three designs on acetate. The first screen has two versions of the original Scout logo in different sizes for kids and adult shirts; I’m going to offer shirts to Scout friends and pack a bunch for a little girl in Texas.
Peer Pressure is squirrelly. Suspension mods installed by the previous owner make the ride stiff; at highway speeds expansion joints and large bumps render the steering vague as the body floats up over the springs and back downward. Braking has gotten dicier since I bought the truck. Moderate pedal pressure these days sends the front and rear in different directions as the pads and calipers grab at different points.
Among the many repairs and upgrades I’d like to do is one of the (I’m told) easiest and most inexpensive improvements to the braking system: the Hydro-Boost. A system originally installed in GM products the world over, it’s an improvement on the old big round booster design Scouts were installed with, because it does away with vacuum-powered braking in favor of fluid power supplied by the power steering pump. It seems to be a pretty popular mod for a lot of vintage cars. Following a thread on the Just Internationals forum, I ventured out to the junkyard with my brother-in-law in search of an Astro Van with ABS brakes. We found four with and two without—the difference being the ones without ABS have the big round brake booster we’re looking to discard. I found an ABS Pontiac Safari already propped up on tires waiting for me, so early this morning I got to work.
I disconnected the hose running across the top, then the right-side hose that ran to the power steering pump. Thankfully, someone had already pulled the radiator, so I had a ton of room to work with.
The left-side hose running down underneath was very difficult to get off (I didn’t have metric wrenches) so I punted and cut the hose as close to the top of the metal line as I could. I used a pair of channel locks to snip the coiled metal hose running to and from the ABS computer (the big box directly below the hydroboost assembly) below the proportioning valve because those bolts were not coming off for love or money.
Finally, I crawled inside and used a long 15mm metric socket to take off four mounting bolts on the bracket. Hopefully other used Astros will be cleaner under the dash than mine was.
Then, a bunch of wrestling, tugging, pulling, and twisting got the whole assembly free. GM didn’t leave a lot of room in the engine bay to work with, so I removed the top fitting to clear the cowl and put it back on when I was done.
Stay tuned. Next I’m going to assemble all the parts needed to retrofit the assembly.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
We got word yesterday that Jen’s aunt Mary passed after a long battle with cancer. Mary was a kind lady, and seemed to always be smiling every time I saw her. Mama and Finn are going to saddle up and head north to Ohio to pay their respects while I hold the fort down here.
I took a little downtime before the snow flew the other day to run up the Scout, do a few errands, and slip my rollbar pads on. They fit really well! So well, in fact, that I dusted off a pair of inserts I had up in the rafters of the garage and put them in for old time’s sake. These are the originals from Chewbacca so the passenger’s side is cracked where a protruding bolt head made it impossible to slide between the bar and the window. Luckily, I’ve got another good set covered in red river dust waiting to be cleaned up.
On the Binder Planet, a member called 540fan built a bumper based on the plans Brian and I developed, and it turned out really well. One thing I really like about his setup is how he handled the swingarm stop—an elegant and simple plate welded to the top right side prevents the swingarm from going past 180°. He also mounted his Hi-Lift on the backside of the triangle below the spare instead of the face of the bumper, so he was able to add a couple of clevis mounts to the face. It looks like his hinge pin mount is different as well; I think he may have welded it directly to the face of the bumper instead of adding standoffs. Overall, it looks great and I’m happy I was able to help lay some groundwork.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.