I haven’t been on in a long while since I haven’t been shaping in… a long while.
That being said, my stock of logo paper (from SurfSource, wonderful stuff, thickish and easy to print, good definition) is finally at its end and I have a couple of projects in the works. They apparently don’t carry it anymore and so I’m looking for suggestions.
Preferably thick enough to run through a printer without doing tape-ups. As transparent as possible after lamination. All the usuals on a wish listaAnyone onto sa
Do you have an art stor nearby like Hobby Lobby or Michaels? If so, look for where they have Calligraphy supplies and you should find Sumi Rice Paper. A 100-sheet tablet was about $12 the last time I bought it.
…Jefrey with one “F” Jefrey; sorry Pixies song. In any case you can silkscreen directly on the board. If the logotype is just a letter or few letters or line; couple of colors… works pretty good in case you do not have the right paper.
You ask for paper weight; the reference is the rolled cig paper. That is impossible to find at 0.0015 of an inch but look for closer paper.
In the case of the paper not so transparent, cut the logotype (after screened of course) exactly besides the letter edges.
I’ll be shopping this weekend - hopefully something will turn up locally. I hadn’t thought of silkscreening but that’s something to play with at some point…
McDing, I’ve gone this route in the past, thanks. The Surfsource sheets were great in that you could just run them in your ink jet like regular paper. If I can find something that does that I’ll be stoked.
The “Surf Supply” stores on line are not in the paper business. The paper I’ve bought from those places years ago by the sheet is exactly the same as what I’ve bought from the art store in 100 sheet tablets at a fraction of the cost. The on-line Surf Supply stores are either buying the same Sumi paper tablets and just cutting the binder off of the tablet to sell it as individual sheets or buying it as a 500-sheet ream and adding the markup.
The companies who are making the laminates professionally are not screan printing logos these days. You could but I don’t know why you would given the technology available. They are likely using wide format plotters to print the logos on roll fed rice paper. (same paper once again just purchased on a roll from the paper supplier) The $25,000+ plotters they likely use have white ink which is something your home printer does not so they can print white as well when needed. If you don’t need white there are much more affordable plotters that can do the job down as low as $2,000-$7,000. They can even run fiberglass through the plotters off of a roll on the higher end machines. Its possible the lam companies could just be subbing the lams out to a company like the one I work for that has the equipment and the know how. We run two $35,000 plotters in our office and several less costly machines for other work. You’d have to sell a lot of surfboard laminates to justify even one $35,000 machine like that so odds are they sub out the high end work that requires white and perhaps have one or two of the less expensive units in house for basic laminates.
In my case, a return to shaping means a couple of balsa boards here and there. Certainly nothing to justify any significant expense and if I do play with silkscreening it will be just to get the experience doing something new.
And thanks for the links - I’ll get checking them out!
If you do decide to Silk Screen a few lams, it’s not that hard. There are companies that will “burn” a Screen for you. A few years ago I found a company that would burn the screen and send it to me UPS for under $30. All I had to do was send them my art via an email. Years ago we used to Silk Screen T-shirts by hand one at a time with an insert on a table in the back of a surf shop.
…there are 2 small companies that make the logotypes for the surf brands in California. Both silckscreen the logotypes. There is 1 in Aussie land that do the logotypes for most boards; silckscreening too.
There are another 2 other guys that do the logos silkscreened for a few smaller shapers there in California.
I silkscreen the small ones in the past did all the logotypes then a guy silckscreened for me. The thing is what tint to use. Do not use water based ones. Use epoxy ones. I have both and the quality is evident.
Many of the big brands have poor quality laminates. Most are water based.
For a few boards and also wood boards a good way to go is to silkscreen directly on the wood or on the sanded hot coat.
In the past I did it on that and on the foam. In all the look is very good.
For what its worth, the biggest company I’m aware of making and selling logos has posted pictures on their Instagram that are obviously roll fed rice paper printed on a plotter.
Hi Mako224; the only that I am aware to use that is boardlams but may be the others just are going on that bus.
I do not know if printers still do not print white color or have not so good resolution like years ago but the best inks and quality is by silkscreening however; not cheap hence may be the change to plotters right now; as you say? I still see the silkscreened laminates in all the other companies so I am not sure.
I know that are others (outside surfboards Industry) that offer both; They offered me both services and the price is different but the inks quality I think is not the same…but as mentioned in the other comment, nobody cares or notices as you can see in many low quality laminates that you can see with pyzel and other machined shapes.
There are three Silk Screeners on the West Coast that print lams via Silk Screen. One in Hawaii, one in Oxnard and one in Orange County. But; that is not all they do. They Screen Print a variety of other products, T-Shirts etc. if they only did lams, they’d be out of business. The Silk Screen business is so damned competitive. You can get T’s done for under $10. “Imprint” advertises on National Television. Vista Print is another that will print just about anything via Email. The difference is in the quality. If I want a 100% Cotton T, I will most likely have to buy those T’s myself and have them shipped to my Screener. PS; Most screeners have no idea what you’re talking about when you ask them if they will print logos on"Rice" paper. The screen should hold more than one image so that multiple logos can be printed per sheet of paper. Time consuming and not worth the money to do one image per page or worse yet screening multiple images one at a time per page. So people who do lams know what they’re getting into. Once you have ordered a run of lams, that order will last a small board builder for quite a while.
