Magnum Mania!

(Continued from this thread: link.)





This metallic copper ink is beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice, nor do they quite capture its actual shade of color. In real life it is very much the color of copper, such as a new penny (which is an excellent match for the appearance of the label on the MPI prop bottles). I was a bit apprehensive about the ink, having never seen or used it before, and having never used metallic ink of any sort, but I couldn't be more pleased with it. I was expecting it to be ridiculously thick, like white plastisol or worse, but it wasn't; it was very easy to apply and covered fully with one hit (no hit-flash-hit like you need to do with white-on-black).

To those of you who PM'd me to buy one of these T-shirts, I'm going to look into shipping prices to various parts of the country, and if they are fairly similar, I may just charge a set price with free shipping, to avoid the hassle of coming up with a different price for everyone. It will probably be something like $25, free shipping. For the person in Canada, I assume it will be more for shipping though. When I get that worked out and I get all of your T-shirts printed, I'll PM you all with my PayPal address (assuming you all have PayPal).

Man, that looks good!

Excellent work! But we've come to expect nothing less from MR.

Sounds like a good plan for distribution also.

Will be watching for notification.

That ink looks perfect and I can't imagine it actually looking better in person, but again, I'll take your word for it!

MaximRecoil wrote:For the person in Canada, I assume it will be more for shipping though

Ah, the joys of international postage fees (not to mention the exchange rate lately ). From the looks of it, it'll be worth it. Nice job!

308GUY wrote:Man, that looks good!

Excellent work! But we've come to expect nothing less from MR.

Sounds like a good plan for distribution also.

Will be watching for notification.

That ink looks perfect and I can't imagine it actually looking better in person, but again, I'll take your word for it!

Thanks. I've got yours packaged and addressed; I'll mail it tomorrow. And yeah, the ink looks better in person. The camera doesn't really capture the subtle shimmer of the metallic particles, especially as you move it in the light. Also, the color is a little more "copperish" than it appears in those pictures. I'm very impressed with it. I had an idea in my mind of how I wanted these shirts to turn out, and a lot of times you can expect to be disappointed if you are basing such an idea on unknowns (this particular ink was an unknown from my perspective), but these shirts came out exactly as I'd hoped, if not better.

Styles Bitchley wrote:

MaximRecoil wrote:For the person in Canada, I assume it will be more for shipping though

Ah, the joys of international postage fees (not to mention the exchange rate lately ). From the looks of it, it'll be worth it. Nice job!

Thanks. I sent you a PM. I need to know your mailing address so I can find out how much shipping will be. My guess is that it will be $15.50 (USD) regardless of what part of Canada you're from, because it gave me the same price on the USPS postage calculator website for shipping to New Brunswick (about a 3-hour drive from here) as it did for shipping to British Columbia (about a week's drive). It seems to be a flat-rate for "First-Class Package International Service", which is the cheapest option.

Looks great

Fr. Paddy McGuinness wrote:Looks great

Thanks. I sent you a PM.

Got my shirt today

Excellent quality shirt and print.

Outstanding work and service.

Anybody who had any doubts should put them to rest, this is a great addition to anybody's MPI memorabilia collection.

Great job MR!

Just got home and there was a package from Maine . . . shirt looks great, excellent work.

Thank you!!!

Thanks for the comments. This was a fun project. I want to mention a couple of things which you may already know:

It is best to wash and dry these shirts inside-out. This applies to all printed shirts, not just these ones. Washing and drying inside-out minimizes abrasion against the print during the wash/dry cycles, and prolongs the life of it. The print won't self-destruct if you don't turn them inside-out before washing/drying, but it is just good practice to do so. For that matter, it is a good idea to do it with all clothes, especially blue-jeans, but for a different reason, i.e., it helps prevent streaking of the color (most likely to happen with new indigo-dyed blue jeans).

Also, printed shirts shouldn't be ironed, at least not on the part that's printed. This is especially important with plastisol prints (which is by far the most common type of ink used in screen printing, and has been for many decades). Plastisol, like the name suggests, is a type of plastic (PVC-based), and heat from an iron along with pressure / ironing motion can deform the print.

Properly-cured plastisol prints typically will outlast the shirt itself, so there shouldn't be any problems with durability. When I cure my plastisol prints, I monitor the surface temperature of the ink with an IR temperature gun, to ensure that all parts reach the curing temperature of 320 degrees F (I aim for about 350 F surface temperature to ensure the ink is up to temperature throughout, not just on the surface). A lot of screen printed shirts sold in major stores are under-cured, because a lot of big-time screen printers just send their shirts through a conveyor dryer and assume they are cured without actually confirming it. For example, a given belt speed and dryer temperature which will fully cure an, e.g., one-hit black print won't necessarily fully cure a hit-flash-hit white print. Being dry to the touch doesn't necessarily mean it is fully cured, because plastisol becomes dry to the touch at about 220 F (which is known as a "flash cure"). Under-cured plastisol prints will quickly start to crack everywhere after just a couple/few washings, and in some cases, much of it will flake off, like this:



That shirt was commercially printed in 1986 and sold at our school; it obviously wasn't properly-cured. That's the shirt which got me started in screen printing by the way. I bought one of those shirts in '86 when I was in 6th grade. In 2004 I saw a co-worker wearing one, and I convinced him to sell it to me, because I wanted to have it reproduced. I took it to a local, big-time screen printing shop and asked if they could do it. The image they sent me for approval was only a rough approximation at best, so I decided to learn how to use vector software myself and reproduce the design exactly, drawing each letter manually. They used my file for screen printing, and in hindsight they didn't do a very good job; i.e., there was prominent "sawtooth" on all of the angled and curved edges. When I started screen printing for myself a few years ago, that's one of the first designs I printed:

MaximRecoil;

Awesome shirts! I'll IM you for an order.

Rands wrote:MaximRecoil;

Awesome shirts! I'll IM you for an order.

Thanks. I printed your shirts tonight:



I'll mail them out tomorrow.

My friend is in the process of building a CNC router setup, and he's gotten to the stage where he can make stuff with it, though he says he still has a lot of tweaking to do. He knew that I'd recently done the Coop's label so he decided to make a wooden (mesquite) coaster with my vector file as a test. Here's a video he made of it:

https://youtu.be/RC9pIpJepZk

And a couple of pictures he took:

This is incredible MaximRecoil!
Those CNC routers are just amazing!!
I can see some Christmas orders coming your way.
I bet Conch will want a box for his establishment!

Thanks for sharing this with us!

MR, sorry, I did get your PM last Sept. I was just a bit too busy to reply at the time and forgot.

Are the Coops shirts still available? I'd love to buy one...or two!

Coops wrote:MR, sorry, I did get your PM last Sept. I was just a bit too busy to reply at the time and forgot.

Are the Coops shirts still available? I'd love to buy one...or two!

Yes, I still have the screen so I can make more, assuming I have the size(s) you need. I'll send you a PM.