Final Print

My blank shirts arrived a day early. My wife suggested that I print the design in brown ink. I think it looks much better than the red in the test print. I plan to list these in my shop tomorrow.

My son refuses to stand for photos unless I promise to not show his face. 

I don't know if anybody read the comments on my last post about the Tour of Flanders, but Ian from the U.K. rode the course on Saturday and watched the race from the side of the road on Sunday. Here's a link to his photos. Keep checking his blog, I'm sure he'll be posting a report soon.

Thanks Ian!

Now this is completely random. Me and my 12 year old son and 16 year old daughter watched the Woodstock documentary on VH1 last night. My kids have been interested in classic rock since they started playing Guitar Hero. I had watched the documentary before but I had completely forgotten that Sly and the Family Stone performed. Awesome!

Test Print

I've dealt with one roadblock after another trying to get my shop up and running again. This is the first screen I've been able to expose with my new ghetto exposure setup. Now I just need shirts to print on.

New bike design

The screen is taped up and ready for the ink.

The first test print on a spare gray American Aparel t shirt left over from another job. I'm going to print this on a "natural" colored t shirt. Natural is kind of an off-white color.

Death of a T Shirt

Like most men if I like an item of clothing I'll wear it till it literally falls apart. I've been known to keep pairs of underwear until the elastic bands have completely separated from the body of the briefs. So I was upset to discover that one of my most comfortable t shirts was no longer suitable to be worn in public. Two large holes appeared in the armpits and in the design, presumably from the stress of the last wash. This shirt will now be taken out of the rotation and be retired.

There is an unusual story behind how I aquired this particular shirt. Back in 1999 when I lived and worked in Abilene, Texas, an aquaintance working for the U.S. Border Patrol boarded a Greyhound bus that had just arrived from El Paso on it's way to Dallas. The Border Patrol agent discovered an unclaimed suitcase in the cargo compartment which when opened was found to contain fifty pounds of marijuana. There were several throw away t shirts in the suitcase used to cover the bales. The agents seized the marijuana and I kept the t shirts.   

OMNH-Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. I've often wondered how this shirt went from the museum gift shop, to El Paso, and eventually into a load of weed.

My poor shirt. It will serve it's new purpose as a shop rag.

Now, I don't know the exact age of the shirt above but I'm guessing that it's not as old as this next shirt which appears to have held up much better after having been washed about an equal number of times.

Nice design

This was my first race.  It was cold, rainy, and generally miserable. I made the rookie mistake of taking too many pulls at the front burning too much energy in the first fifteen miles of the thirty two mile race. I struggled to the finish.

The shirt below is the grandaddy of all my shirts. It was for an Air Force Security Police competition in Las Vegas in 1987. I was stationed at Bergstrom AFB in Austin from 1986 through 1989. The base was shut down some years ago and turned into the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

You can't tell from the photo but this shirt is practically see-through now.

The thing I noticed about my old shirts is that the two oldest, the Security Police and Primavera t shirts are 50/50 cotton polyester blends where as the OMNH shirt is 100 per cent cotton. Maybe I should start printing on 50/50 shirts, or does anybody really need a 20+ year life span from a t shirt?

 Since I started screen printing I can appreciate the work that went into the design and printing of these shirts, especially the shirts that were made before the availability of computers, Photoshop, and everything else that makes life so easy these days. If anybody has any really old t shirts around I like to see them. You can email photos or send me a link. 

Getting Ready

I paid for a small ad in the September issue of Urban Velo. These guys have a great new magazine that appears to be very popular. You can go to their web site and read each issue online or subscribe and receive a printed copy. I figured that I had better advertise with them while it's still affordable. I'm pre-printing a few shirts just in case things go well.

Catching Up

Me and my wife had to run to Dallas for a couple of days so I had to play catch-up to fill some t shirt orders this morning. Everything seemed to be going wrong in the garage over the past week. When I haven't used my screens for a few days I wipe them down with a soy based cleaner to make sure that the prints are nice and sharp. These soy products are much safer to use than traditional screen printing chemicals, which is important since I work out of my house, but they have a limited life span. The soy goes bad. I printed a few shirts several days ago and noticed some faint black shadowy smudges on the fabric. My "on press cleaner" had expired and I didn't have a back up container. Rather than waste any more shirts I just stopped printing. T shirt orders started backing up. Luckily UPS delivered my stuff Friday night and I was good to go this morning. I really don't want people to have to wait too long for their shirts.

New Men's Shirt

This is the men's version of the design by Justin at Triplemilled.com. Ultra blue print on a tangerine Alternative Apparel t shirt. I should have these shirts listed for sale in my Etsy shop this weekend.



I guess it's time to take photos somewhere other than my front porch. By the way, that's my son. He appears in all the photos in my Etsy shop. He cringes every time he sees me walking down the hall holding a t shirt.

Printing Again

A guy from Australia ordered ten shirts from us last week, but I had to travel to south Texas for several days for my real job. I hate these unexpected trips. I took the day off work to print his order. It's nice to be printing again.

Welcome to the new Rat Trap Press blog

I'm finally printing again after a short lay-off after the holidays. I opened a shop in Etsy a little while back but didn't really start selling until November. I was really happy with the sales we had in the late part of November till about December 15th when we closed the shop for vacation. Thankfully the Etsy sales paid for our kids Christmas. Since I had a little free time I decided to prepare a couple of new designs.

Here's the screen for an old racing bike design taped up and ready to go.


Test print on a gray t shirt


A highly distressed Tour of Flanders design.