Post #394847 by Cammo on Fri, Jul 18, 2008 7:01 AM

Just to let y'all know where I've been at for the last few weeks -

Been experimenting with TAPA. I figured, how hard can this stuff be to make? I mean, it doesn't look so hard to me. Making the actual barkcloth, that's hard, but the traditional printing techniques and stains used, that's some interesting stuff.

(Here's the Cammo-patented, copyrighted, and now trademarked process!!!!)

So I tried a lot of techniques, and finally made some real nice stain by simply boiling regular wood (too thin) & liquid shoe stain (too thick) together, in the pot I use to clean brushes with. Then you add just a bit of spar varnish to thin it out, and make sure the stain doesn't seep and spread into the paper. Bottle the result in a jam jar. Do it again with red-brown colors to get a different hue, bottle it again. Same thing again, but use WHITE this time! It works!

Make wooden printing designs out of chunks of balsa - it's super easy to carve with an x-acto knife. Glue the balsa with carpenter's glue to a solid piece of wood so it doesn't snap in yer hand.

Apply, depending on the type of paper, in sets of designs. It's easy. Has anybody tried this before on TC??? I searched but couldn't find anything.

Anyway, I designed the whole process to do large-format sheets of paper, but then decided to try it on hats. So later today I'll post the resulting hat, which I'm still working on. It came out real nice......