Is a darkroom absolutely necessary for coding screens stick around to find out
welcome back if you're new to the channel be sure to subscribe
one of the questions I get asked pretty often is I thought you needed a darkroom
to coat your screens they need you to stay inside that darkroom in the
meantime while you're setting your film up and going through the exposure
process well I'm going to tell you from my experience that you can coat your
screens and take them out for a little bit without it causing any kind of
issues obviously you don't want to just leave them out sitting out all day long
and the Sun as you guys can see here in our shop we do have some daylight coming
through with both these doors and we have some little light panels up there
to allow some daylight in and this is the environment in which we coat our
screens the key is though you need to let your screens dry in a dark cool and
dry place if you leave them out in the Sun once they dry they'll expose they'll
slowly expose so the key is really once they've dried then they become
photoreactive so I'm going to demonstrate this point
I've got a screen ready to go to be coated I'm gonna coat it out in the
sunlight I'm gonna tuck it away in the drying cabinet we're gonna let it dry
and then I'm gonna pull it out of the cabinet and I'm just gonna kind of take
my sweet time with it sitting out here in the light gonna set it on the
exposure unit and we'll see how it turns out
now that I have my emulsion coater now that I have my scoop coder all clean
we're gonna wait for the screen to dry we'll be right back to Sue's astride and
we'll do that experiment all right our screen is all nice and dry
let's go ahead and take the screen out of the cabinet and I'm just gonna kind
of let it hang out here there it is right there
I'm still coming up through third shope both doors are open and I'll let it sit
out for just a little bit and then you guys can kind of see that it's it'll
expose just a touch but it's not gonna be that big of a deal so come over here
see what the weather is doing this rain and a moment ago
okay I'm going to grab the scissors I need to cut this piece of film in half
still sitting out we're going to grab my film toss our screen up on the exposure
unit still not in a dark and I'm just gonna cut this people fill them up real
quick it's been sitting out for a couple
minutes see if I can do this one-handed
so I'm fin out for good in three minutes
let's go ahead and expose this thing
and there we go our image exposed and washed out absolutely fine let me let me
give you guys a little bit of a closer this is a 110 mesh got some details in
there but as much as the one tins are gonna hold now I'm going to take my
screen set it outside that way can post harden in the Sun gonna help it dry a
little quicker so as you can see it's not absolutely necessary to have a
darkroom while coding your screens or bring them out to expose them on your
exposure unit however you do need to drive them in a cool dark place although
it's really not that cool in here it's pretty hot I mean it's practically an
oven in there which can be good because it dries your screens a lot quicker so
there is that it's very humid here too so we have all these things working
against us and not necessarily for us but you know screens go in the drying
cabinet in a dark place and it works great this cabinet works great I'll be
sure to do future video on the specifications of this cabinet just in
case you want to build something similar for your shop thanks for tuning in guys
if you're new to this channel be sure to subscribe until next time we'll see you
later