Celebrating a Decade of Bootleg Hackaday Merch

A podcast listener recently wrote in to tell us that while trying to buy a legit Hackaday t-shirt, they came across this 2012 Instructable from [yeltrow] that explains how you can cheaply throw your own Wrencher shirts by screen printing.

Now, historically, as long as you're not trying to make money from our name, we've never felt the need to stop people from putting our logo on their projects. So we're not too worried about someone making Wrencher shirts, especially since they were almost certainly for their personal use. Although the fact that [yeltrow] apparently described the project as a "Hackster style shirt" to try and avoid using our name ended up being a prophetic 4D chess meta joke that you couldn't make up if you try.

The blurry quality of the print works well with the logo.

Anyway, the reason we're highlighting it now is because it's a reminder of how simple it is to run your own operation of serigraphy. As the name suggests, you stretch a piece of screen between a frame, stick a piece of paper on which your design is printed, cut out the design and boom - you have a stencil that allows you to quickly duplicate a physical version of an image without the need for a CNC, laser or any of our other modern devices. Here it's used with a spray paint can on plain t-shirts, but it might as well be used to tag your local brick wall.

Nowadays you can just upload an image file to any number of sites and receive a pack of shirts/stickers/mugs/whatever you want within a week. But we think it's still a technique worth knowing. Not only is it cheap and easy, but there's some value in having the end product in your hands the same day - it's the same reason many pirates still find ways to custom-craft their cards. home despite the wide availability of low-cost products. Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Services.

Special thanks to [Gregor] not only for alerting us to this one, but for listening to our weekly Hackaday podcast.