Friends

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I can confidently say I'd be nowhere in life without my friends, and somehow, I have the best friends one could ask for. Sure, I know why they keep me around, endless hours of amusement of my various escapades, but I am truly thankful for them, all of them, all over the world.

Today, my friend Dean (deanp) who has been instrumental in Little Traveler for close to two years now, came over to get all the new silk screen equipment operational and test a few shirts out. Brought his wife, who was also great for helping, and we had one heck of a day. Starting only with 4 clean screens, we went through the process from coating screens to printing film to exposing screens and of course getting shirts on the press and through the dryer.

It was a total success!!! Just got the shirts out of the wash/dry and they came out great.

Thank you Dean! and thank you to Bob and Jurgen for helping so much with the dryer. And thanks to Mark (buckterrier) who is helping with the restoration of my rusty old screen frames. who else would load up his Vue with these things and bring them to a powder coater in CT?

And thank you to Nicolas Hunziker (targa florio) who designed the artwork on the test shirts today. Nicolas does some beautiful work!

I am one lucky guy.

I wish I had photo-documented the day, there would have been some great pics, but here's just a few shots.

Brick red on the press



Dean showing proper squeegee form



My first shirt. OK, the white didn't come so well. Turns out we needed a roundhead squeegee for dischargeable white ink (bleaches the shirt so you can put very little white on a black shirt...real art to getting it to work)



Black screen



A few of the test shirts. These came out better, I kid you not, than shirts I've paid serious money to have produced for me. They are just kick-around experiment, learner shirts. Note the grey shirt burned up in the dryer; we turned up the belt speed.

[billybek]

Looks great, Shawn.
We are looking to do another order soon!

How did your heat/ drier control retrofit go?
It looked like you had some pretty good help on that thread so I didn't chime in...

[bell]

i like the non-perfect white lettering.....adds character

[gassy]

Those look GREAT.

[mb911]

man I need you to do some M&K shirts. looks great

[Rich76_911s]

Shaun,

That is awesome news. The shirts look great.

Nothing quite like a good friend.

Rich

[deanp]

Hey Shaun - was just sitting down to send you an email and figured I'd check OT. Didn't expect to see my mug

I think we had a very good day, and I have to say I was more than a little relieved to see everything working considering the condition some of the equipment started in a couple months ago. I was optimistic but a little worried (I can say that now...)

I really enjoyed showing you the ropes and expect we'll need to schedule a few more lessons.

Sorry we had to run at the end, this was Abby's longest time in the crate - just over 8hrs and Mel was eager to make sure she was okay.

The washed shirts look great!

[Laneco]

Originally Posted by bell

i like the non-perfect white lettering.....adds character

Me too. It adds a nice vintage look to the shirt. Not like a vintage pattern trying to look old, but a real vintage shirt that's been gently worn, washed a few times and is slightly aged.

Either way, those are great looking shirts!

angela

[Hugh R]

Those of you who regularly insult people on this board should learn something from this. As I've said before, I travel a lot and have met may pelicans, Shaun, and Dean included. One of my best friends who lives about 1/2 mile from me I met here.

[Hugh R]

Did you see the T-Shirt of my 1930 Rudge Whitworth motorcycle that Shaun did for me? That's not me or Shaun in the picture.

[BGCarrera32]

I dig the black one. That's cool.

[K. Roman]

I used to own a small silkscreen company in the early nineties. IT was a blast. I perfected the pressure/angle of the squeegee. I loved it. Vacuum, mercury vapor exposure units. Blasting out screens with old emulsion, laying the perfect emulsion in the dark, even tried decals by hand. Very fumey. Lost some braincells with that one. The only thing I didn't have was a machine to make positives. I used clear overhead paper and photo copied the images. If it was a larger print, we'd tape two together. Very good times. I miss it!

[911Rob]

Awesome!
You're a hell of a lucky guy.

[livi]

Very nice shirts! Yes, good relationships are as vital as food, drink and oxygen.

[turbo6bar]

Those shirts look great.

Geographical, political, and religious differences are secondary to the fact we are Pelicanites.

Glad the process is working well. I learned a bit from the dryer thread (thanks SLO-BOB) and am using that knowledge to integrate digital timer relays in the latest project. good luck, jurgen

[Jims5543]

Shaun,

I just placed an order with Little Boy Chic.

Great product line, I ordered a couple of your T's for my son. You sent me some samples last year and they are by and far his favorite shirts. Mom loved them too, the great quality impressed her.

Good luck with your endeavors, seeing those silk screen setups brings back memories, my uncle in Brooklyn had a garment factory and my dad used to sell silk screened shirts for him. We used to go to Brooklyn to shoot artwork and setup screens, then print the shirts. We mostly did baseball teams, charter boats etc..

Your shirts look like a lot more fun.

Again good luck I hope this works out well for you.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by 911Rob

Awesome!
You're a hell of a lucky guy.

Yes, I am.

hi Bill, wonderful to hear! this season is coming out great. Couldn't have brought the dryer to life without Bob and Jurgen.

Bell and Angela, I agree, it does look better, but stores would see it as a flaw, and some would be perfect and some would have character. I'd get calls, and returns . I've got some custom photoshop filters that create distresses/scuffs/scrapes and build these into the artwork now and again; when a buyer makes decisions based on pre-season samples (I'm doing Fall 09 now), production has to be very close to the sales samples. Not to say I couldn't build this type of character into a sales sample now. the Urban Dino's being handmade with an HPLV gun and ink stamps are accepted because they are handmade, and even so I've gotten calls.

Ben, let me know what you are after. I'm doing a run for the RGruppe for this May's Treffen drive. Hope to do one custom shirt per month for folks here as well. First one will be based on some kind of abstract MFI pic/art. Can do metallic foils (silver/black/grey) as well BTW.

I agree Rich!

Jurgen, thanks again man. Be sure to send me your size, etc.

Hi Jim, cool, thanks, I love LBC, one of our better customers. appreciate the well-wishes, hope all it well with you down in FL.

[SLO-BOB]

Nice work Shawn. Love the GP design and colors. I was in the southern hemisphere for the last posts on the topic. I forced myself to leave the laptop at home, but I thought about your situation while on vacation believe it or not. I'm glad it came together and the dryer didn't light the shirts on fire.

[Kroggers]

That is cool my friend, now have a beer or six to celebrate