Section C – Basic Supply List (continued)

Two bucks for the self-serve car wash – Really! You need a high pressure spray to rinse out the screen. Your shower will not work. A garden hose won’t cut it either unless you have really good water pressure and a nozzle that puts out a really strong spray like this one from Home Depot. The plain pistol type isn’t going to cut it. You could buy a power washer from Home Depot if you wanted and had a place to use it; but for now, go to the car wash!

Wash out screen at car wash - $2.00

Ink – Pick a color you like and buy a quart. This won’t cost more than $20, and in fact teeshirtprinters.com sells a quart of super-soft black for under $15, delivered. Buy one quart of plastisol ink.
Cost:________________

A squeegee – for forcing ink through the stencil. The squeegee is another area you definitely do not want to cut corners in! A lousy squeegee makes a lousy print. Be careful – if it says ‘squeegee blade’, that is all it is – a blade with no handle. This is for automatic machines and does a hand press operator no good! Make sure it says, ‘with handle’. Get a 70-durometer 12” squeegee (or up to 14” if you want).
Cost:________________

Platen Adhesive – this is an aerosol spray adhesive used to keep the shirt from sticking to the back of the screen when you print, and it is a necessity. Buy it or you’ll be miserable trying to get a good print. Buy one can of “380” spray adhesive.
Cost:________________

Blockout – used to cover pinholes in the printing area, and the edges of the stencil where the emulsion didn’t coat the screen. You can use a liquid blockout called simply ‘block out’ or use tape made for just this purpose. Don’t use any old tape, as the adhesives can be difficult to remove from the screen. For short runs blockout tape works best, so I recommend starting with tape. Buy one 2” roll of blockout tape.
Cost:________________

Chemicals – you need ink remover and emulsion remover. Each is approximately $25 per gallon, and teeshirtprinters.com offers all the chemicals you need.
Cost:________________

A heat gun to cure the ink – not a hair dryer, but a paint stripping gun like you can find at – you guessed it – Home Depot. They are under $30 and can cure a shirt in a minute or less. You’ll want to upgrade to a flash dryer eventually, at a cost of $400-500, and then after that to a heat tunnel for $1500 or more… but not now. Buy a heat gun.
Cost:________________

A shirt – and some old rags to set up and practice on. You may want to buy test pelons from teeshirtprinters.com for around $25 per hundred, but you can probably go through the dust rag pile and find what you need to practice on. But, for the sake of being accurate, let’s figure you buy the pelons-
Cost:________________

This is all you need to get started. We’ve added every single thing you’ll need, and in the next section we cover how to use it all. We added several items you may not need, and stressed the areas where there can be no substituting or skimping.

Add up your entire list and figure what your total initial investment will be. You should be pleasantly surprised to find it under $500 including your press. There are not many businesses you can start today for that price!

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