first of all, thanks everyone for the great info and feedback on this site; only problem is, it’s turned my passing interest into a passion…! there’s been a lot of discussion about printing logos with desktop injets on this site (i’ve been using the deskjet c80 for a while now) but as i’m getting more serious about artwork, i’m wondering if anyone has info about professional wide-format injets. is there one that works well for all-over prints without bleeding of the notoriously difficult yellow-brown tones? any info or contacts would be greatly appreciated…
Also if anyone has info in so cal on who can do large format on rice parer that would be awesome. Something along the lines of what deave feral was discussing a few weeks ago. Es team manager www.ovellesurf.com Ovelle Surfboards www.hardinsurf.com hardin surfboards http://www.paradoxdistribution.com
our large formats are not on rice paper! contact troy at www.tbdgroup.net and he can send them to you!from australia… http://www.feraldave.com
I have a HP Designjet 500. $1600, works great. It prints 24" wide, wide enough to cover a surfboard. I don’t need the 36" wide, but you might. For patterning, I print full size templates that I cut out with scissors then trace onto the blank with a magic marker. For graphics I print on 24"x36" rice paper, no problem, no backing sheet. Univ Bookstore in Seattle used to carry the rice paper I liked, but I don’t know where to get it any more. My two boards are only a year old so I don’t know about fading. If you want museum quality, you might want to look into HP’s UV resistant inks – as far as I know that good ink won’t work in my plotter.
Hey Soup… and others? I was over at a friends this weekend carving pumpkins (its not my fault, blame the girlfriend) and a lot of them were using these stencils. I havn’t carved one in probally a decade, so of course I deemed that cheating and pulled out a marker… anyway. They use these little wheels, with spikes, to roll across the line and create a line of little holes in the pumpkin as their cutline. I sat there thinking, wow, I bet I could use that for my paper templates, and not have to cut them out. Kind of pointless if you intend on making a template to keep, but it serves my purposes at this point in my shaping…
Soup, I have an HP5000 plotter & I can print with the UV inks & it works very well. I am interested in what program you use to print your full size templates. I am using Adobe Illustrator & am having some difficulty with full size (10’ Plots.) Check dreamflagproductions.com for a small sample of my work. Aloha Ray http://www.raymosslongboards.com
Nice looking boards. I use AutoCad to draw board templates, sidebite angles and do artwork. I draw the stringer as a straight line, then draw half the outline using the spline command and use mirror image command to make it whole. I try to use the fewest number of spline points to get best smoothness. I shaped a 7-2 feather yesterday. I had it all drawn up, then G Hunt posted his suggested outline for the exact same board. I drew his and it was very close but dammit his looked better, so I made a few adjustments but didn’t copy exactly. His shape was based on 15 points, spaced 3" near the ends and 1’ apart elsewhere. Mine was based on 7 spline points. Unfortunately I shape like i surf… with two left feet.