Beginning at Screen Printing  

gee that sounds like an interesting thing to do, I saw someone doing that years ago at a craft market, I didn't know you could do it with out all the expensive equipment, I hope it works out for you, it would be a great hobby.

My husband works in a screen print shop. If you are looking to do something just for fun to make a couple of homemade t-shirts with a large one color print you can use any good curtain sheers.

If you're looking to do something to sell, you might want to consider stenciling instead. Much cheaper and easier to do. Screen printing is NOT an easy, quick or inexpensive process.

Here's a little tutorial I found on doing a homemade screen print for fun. This is not true screen printing but as close as you can get without spending a lot of money.
http://community.livejour...

Talk about a coincidence, I was in silk screening from 75 till 97. I started out printing 4 X 5 sheets of paper for outdoor advertising bill boards, then later moved to printing t-shirts, sweats, shorts etc. The printing surface for the bill boards was like 6 feet by 9 feet, and it was done manual. I was 17 at the time, I'm 50 now and technology has come along way lol.

Are you going to be printing to make a profit? If you are, you are not going to get a quality print out of a curtain. Are you going to be using a manual press or an automatic, also are you going to have a drier?

If you are going to have a small scale set up, and don't want to invest hundreds in mesh. Find a large scale printing company and buy your mesh from them. For that matter you might be able to buy your screen from them. I was a supervisor at a t-shirt company for years and I was over the screen department. I bet I stretched 100,000 screens by hand over the years I worked with them. I even made my own frames at one company and then stretched the mesh over the frames. Prepared the mesh and coated them with emulsion. Gosh this brings back memories. And of course burned the designs into the screen.

The difference between wooden frames and the aluminum tension frames are you can't tighten the mesh on the wooden frame, and it will lose it's tautness quick with use and cleaning and you can end up with a not so clean print. Nine times out of ten you have to rip the mesh out, clean up the frame and start over again, sometimes our wooden screens could only be used once or twice and other times you could use them ten times before having to rip them out, where as with the tension frame, all you had to do was tighten it.

If you have a manual press, how many heads will it have? four or six?

We used mesh gage 60 for puff ink, 110 was the gage we used the most. Of course it depends on the design and what kind of material your printing on. We did mostly t-shirts.

At the poster company we printed bank cards and other surfaces, those gages were like 300 and something, that has been a long time ago.

I even have some pictures in my picture box.

I have been rattling on and on, sorry. I didn't even ask what you were going to be printing.

I have never done SCreen Printing, but Joann's advertise a Provo Craft Yudu Personal Screen Printer, if you want to check it out. They have it on sale for $199.99