Am I the only one whose first screen printing teacher was a 70 year old guy at a flea market in Ohio?

Amy Cooper · 2026-10-13T17:20:03.900502+00:00

So back in 2019 I was walking through the Rogers flea market outside of Columbus and this older guy had a booth with a bunch of handmade shirts hanging up. I asked him how he got the prints so clean and he laughed and said "kid, the secret is you're probably pushing too hard." He pulled out a beat up squeegee and showed me his setup right there on a folding table, just a wooden frame with mesh stapled to it and a piece of glass for a platen. He told me he'd been doing it since the 70s and never owned a real press. I was using one of those $90 kits off Amazon at the time and my prints kept smearing, and he said the problem was my off contact, not my ink. He made me do a pull right there in front of like 8 people and I kid you not it came out cleaner than anything I'd made in 3 months. I never got his name and I've always regretted that. Has anyone else learned more from a random stranger than from all the youtube tutorials combined?

Guest Forum

Loading…

Am I the only one whose first screen printing teacher was a 70 year old guy at a flea market in Ohio? | DIY Screen Printing - Guest Forum