Canadian sources for good inks

[jonkeefe]

(I've always been a bit wary of acrylic paint, as I'm never sure if it'd clog up our screens.)

[Fools Gold]

High viscosity is too thick to really print properly, or at least we can't do it on our auto because it climbs the floodbar and makes a mess.

This is the stuff I was talking about.
Tri-Art » Products » Finest Quality » Liquids

It comes in small tubes, so that's a pain in the ass, but you can mix it with their Silk Screen base and it works decently enough. If you are looking to buy a quart of it, then you're better off just ordering Nazdar, or Speedball from the US or online.

[Andymac]

Willox graphics in Vancouver sells TW, and i think they sell it through Cosmex in montreal. Local art stores should be able to find you larger containers of gallons, but i know what you mean, it's hard sometimes to find what you want or need up here. nazdar make a waterbase 2700 I think, I never liked it much, but I know others who use it.

[kurmis]

Kurmis, we switched from housepaint because it dried really quickly and kept ruining our mesh. You're saying the Rheotech stuff cleans up fairly easily? I might have to try some out!

Hey jonkeefe, I find the Rheotech acrylics are similar in viscosity to the Speedball inks and some colours seem a bit thicker than others. The longer the acrylic sits out, the thicker it gets to work with (or the less of it that you have on the screen, the quicker it dries). I can't see it being suitable for any sort of automatic press over a very long run. When I print; I always flood, print, flood, print and if I get some dry acrylic in the screen, I just moisten the screen with a bit of water and rub the dry ink/paint out, do a couple of test prints and continue with the run again. I am pretty efficient when I'm printing so I don't get a dry screen very often. The thing that I find most important, is that when I'm finished printing a colour, as soon as I scrape the existing acrylic off the screen; I immediately wash the screen out to keep the ink or paint or whatever from drying in the mesh permanently.

[Fools Gold]

I use the Nazdar 2700 almost exclusively. I got totally fed up with trying to get TW inks from Montreal. It would turn into a month and a half long quest to get a gallon of Blue ink. 2700 has limited colours, but a very high level of gloss, so if you need a super glossy black ink, 2700 is great at that.

I did get some gallons of the Halftone Extender Base from TW, what an amazing difference it made in keeping the ink open, very little need for any water to retard the drying
.