Easiest and Fastest way to print on wood!

what's up guys it's Phil and it's time for another quick tip [Music] [Music] so I'm out here in my shop today and I wanted to show you pretty much the indisputable best way to do a wood transfer of a photograph now I have tried for a very long time to get this right I've done a lot of research right here on YouTube so feel free to look around but the main thing is you're gonna see a lot of people who tell you to print off on white paper using an inkjet and use Mod Podge or a glue mixture or something like that to get your wood wet lay it down press it down and then rub it off with water and a toothbrush that's a pain in the I really don't like doing that it takes forever and if you're trying to do anything you're gonna make money on the best way to do it is probably not the least professional way to do it so with that in mind I decided that I would look into a couple of different processes maybe some transfer paper or something like that and here's what I came up with so this is a really rustic looking print which is really what a lot of people are going for but the thing is this was literally like a two-step process and I'll tell you how to do that here in a minute turned out really good it's got some of that kind of rustic rub off you know kind of look that everybody likes but it didn't damage the color and the saturation of the picture and that really to me that's what was most important about this process whenever I try to run it off by hand and use my finger first of all it takes forever and you can't do anything about what's left once you start getting that paper off you either have to leave just a little bit of paper and it looks like crap or you get it off and you start cutting into the ink and it just doesn't work so here's how I did that so the process for this is pretty easy I take a piece of wood and decide how I want it to be oriented make sure that it's sanded nice and smooth and it's good to go so I'm gonna set that aside for now the next thing I do is go to my computer and go onto my photo editing software choose the photo that I want make a couple of quick adjustments I like to make mine a little bit brighter and bring down the contrast just a little bit that way it's not so harsh against the yellow of the wood then I make sure to flip the image so that it's mirrored of itself that way when it is printed onto the wood it doesn't come out backwards that's pretty much a crucial step especially if you have any text or anything in the photo lastly I go to my printer and I set it up to print on transparencies now I happen to have these transparencies from when I was doing screen printing this is what I would definitely recommend is an inkjet transparency the reason being it's a nice thin clear film and then the film actually has this kind of gel substance on the back of it that's dried that activates when the ink hits it and it sets the ink it makes everything come out really really sharp which is really nice and that's why I prefer to use these now you can buy this kind of transparency just about anywhere I ordered mine from screen from DIY screen printing supplies com but you can also get I know Avery and a couple other paper companies make this kind of stuff but definitely get ones that are made for inkjet because otherwise it's not gonna work with this process so for the next part I take my piece of wood and I get some of this Minwax polycrylic the reason I want to do this is because it's water-based so a water base is going to work with these chemicals that are on the film and the ink itself since all of that is also water-based I did some experimenting with oil and it didn't work anywhere near as good so make sure you're using polycrylic and the key here is that we're going to really want to flood the surface you're gonna want this to be you know not so much that it's just soaked but you also don't want to just lightly coat the wood you want there to be a pretty good layer of polycrylic on there so it'll soak into the wood and it'll pull the image off of your transparency starting at one side lay your transparency over the fresh polycrylic making sure to squish it down as you go to get rid of air bubbles and make sure that your image is nice and smoothly laid down without scooting left or right you have just a couple of seconds before the ink starts to separate so it's okay if it shifts just a bit but once it gets set down you want to make sure the image doesn't move now once it's down I like to use a paper towel on the glossy side of the transparency and just push while holding it down in place with the other hand to make sure that I get all the air bubbles out but again you only have a couple of seconds to do this before your inked star to run while you're pushing it so you definitely don't want to do that because you'll lose the crisp sharpness of your image now set your image aside for three to five minutes maybe a little bit longer than five but definitely no shorter than three I did some experimenting and I encourage you to do some experimenting on your own but if you pull the image up too soon the ink will not have separated from the film and the gel will pull the ink up and ruin your print so your final step you're going to grab your film from one of the top corners and keeping it horizontal you want to peel it down towards the middle this is where you can double check to see if you've waited long enough but if you have all of the ink should come off pretty clean and that's going to give you a really nice crisp finish and your sheet won't have any ink left on it after all that just let the polycrylic dry and then go back in put another coat of poly over top of it if you want to do a third coat and give it a light sanding and then a finish coat you can do that as well but I like to have kind of a matte finish to these things so this is the final product it turned out really awesome actually really really excited about this I've never gotten color this vibrant or this clean so definitely give this thing a try this process turned out awesome I'm just I'm super impressed with it so like comment share definitely make sure to subscribe for more quick tips and whatnot comment below and let me know if you guys tried this out how it worked out for you and if you've got any other tips or tricks that I might be able to try to make this come out even better

Channel: PMK Woodworking

Views: 56,617

Rating: 4.8851485 out of 5

Keywords: pmk, woodworking, pmk woodworking, florida adventurers, DIY, print, inkjet, wood, transfer, wood transfer, Print, on, print on wood, inkjet to wood, Wood Print, easy, cheap, fast, best

Id: qn8Y43c3i7s

Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2017