Screen Printing on Wooden Crates and Boxes

“Screen Printing on Wood Boxes and Crates – The Authorative Guide”

Here at North Rustic Design we are always creating new stock and working on processes to improve our product line and supply our customers with the best possible goods. With that in mind and based on several customer requests, we created our own in house design and screen printing department.

When I came on board with the company I brought with me over 25 years of design and screen printing experience and it wasn’t long before we saw the potential in embellishing our products with company logos and launching a line of wildlife ammo boxes. We were starting from scratch and the first thing we needed to do was set up a new computer station and aquire the necessary equipment to print on wood. My experiences in the past were always the textile industry. Printing on wood posed a new challenge for us and through careful thought and a little ingenuity we built a top of the line screen printing station and we were off and running. We designed and built our own exposure unit for ‘burning’ screens that would work for the materials we needed to print. By building a glass topped and fan cooled unit to expose the light sensitive screens and by placing the finished art on film in the unit, we were able to make stencils that held fine detail and held up to the rigors of printing on a rough wooden board or box. We discovered a type of enamel based, air dry ink that when cured was as tough as the products we printed on.

I often get asked how we actually do the screen printing on our products and thought it might be interesting to explain the process.

  • Upon either receiving an art file from a customer or creating one for them in house and having approval for the design, the art is sized to fit the products we are printing and then transferred from the computer to a laser film that allows light to pass through the unprinted areas of the film.
  • We then take a silk screen that has been coated with a light sensitive emulsion, place the film on the screen and expose it to 1000 watts of light in our exposure unit. The time varies depending on the detail in the design but it is rapidly exposed and ready to be washed out. With a light spray of water the areas that were blocked out of the light on the screen from the blackness of the design are rinsed out of the mesh and that area is what allows the ink to pass through the screen.
  • After drying the screen it is placed into hinged clamps on our printing table and the image area is aligned with the product we are printing on. We then tape off all parts of the screen that are not in the image area and flood the screen with an enamel ink…the color of which is determined by the customer.

With the screen lowered down to within a small gap between the mesh and the wood in a process that is called ‘off-contact’, the ink is forced through the stencil with a hard rubber bladed squeegee and the finish design is transferred to the wood. The product is then allowed to dry for 24 hours so that it is ready to ship or be stained.

It is a time consuming process and it takes quite a bit of attention to detail, but the end result is a perfectly embellished crate or box with your company logo or our original art. There is a nominal, one time set up fee for the screen. If a customer reorders, that fee is waved the next time around and for as long as that same design is used. We do not charge for art work if the customer supplies their design in a vectored format (i.e. eps, pdf, ai or cdr). We do proudly offer professional art service if you need us to create a logo for you. All art is emailed to our customers for art approval before it is ever put on their product. I hope this was informative and the whole embellishing process makes a little more sense to those who don’t have prior screen printing knowledge. Please remember that we are here to assist you with your product development and will do everything possible to give your goods an exciting and unique appearance.

Kevin

North Rustic Design Art and Printing Dept.

Logo Screen Printed Crates

Wildlife Series Ammo Storage Boxes

Creative ideas using Wood Crates

In the restaurant and retail environments it is very important to be ahead of the curve in making your presentation stand out from the competition. Wood crates have been around for a very long time and at North Rustic Design we try our best to offer the largest selection of sizes and colors when you are looking to upgrade your look. We start out small with our mini-wood crates and go up to our XXXL crates. You can pick one of our stock sized crates and add one of our 17 different colors and you can get the look and feel you are after. You can look our wholesale page to find out more about ordering bulk crates.
We also specialize in custom designed crates to your exact specifications. And if one of our colors doesn’t work, we can do a custom color match with our partner in stain, Sherwin Williams.
What separates us at NRD, is we specialize in manufacturing wood crates and boxes in an unlimited variety of options. The big box stores, which you have probably come across when looking for crates, use inferior wood and the sizes you see are what you get. Very few places even offer wood crates for sale with staining as an option. Believe me, over the years I have stained 10,000’s of thousands of crates. If you want to stain them yourself for a nice DYI crate project, we offer all of our sizes sanded unfinished.
One of our repeat customers is Google. They love using our true rustic oak crates in their restaurants. They always have us screen print on wood a slogan like, “Naturally Fresh” or “The Dining Room” IMG_0203 (1)
Heading down to Florida at the Boca West Country Club they ordered a variety of our wood crates in 6 different colors to use in their restaurants. The bright and vibrant colors match the feel of the Florida sun. Wood crates by NRD can be bright and colorful, or in a Rustic Color. IMG_0192

Our true rustic wood crates stained in golden oak or dark walnut, fit the rustic design style that is very popular. When looking for the perfect match for the quality of their products and to add some POP to their Point of Purchase display, UGG went with our true rustic oak crates stained golden oak, you can see the picture below. WP_20151113_010
Whether you are looking for bright and colorful stained wood crates to liven up your restaurant or POP display or if you are looking for the rustic vintage feel we hope you find what you are looking for at NRD. These are just a few of the creative ideas our customers have used our wood crates for. If you have a crate project in mind, we’d love to hear from you.
You can email us at northrusticdesign@gmail.com or give us a call at 715-563-0580

Wildlife Art Series Wooden Ammunition Boxes

Welcome to the North Rustic Design art department. My name is Kevin and I’m the artist here at our shop in the northwoods of Wisconsin.
As one of the newest members of the North Rustic family, I was given the task to create some new and exciting art to add another dimension to the fine wood products that we manufacture.
I jumped at the chance! Growing up in Iowa, for as long as I can remember, I have loved to draw. Pen and ink was always my favorite medium to work with so I knew my particular style could translate well to wood. I also had the added experience of working for 20 plus years in the screen printing industry as a designer. So with sketchbook in hand and a green light to set up my own printing division at NRD, I set out to create our Wildlife Series. We are all outdoorsy folk here in Wisconsin and when I relocated here some 25 years ago from the farmlands, I knew this was the place for me. With beautiful scenery and an abundance of fish and wildlife, Wisconsin is a sports persons dream! I was born in the Hawkeye state, but I proudly call myself a Wisconsinite today!
It has been a joy to help build this portion of our company and there will be more exciting things to come! Some of the in stock designs are here on our website. Many more are in the works. Building our embellishing department has opened new doors for us. Not only can we offer our original designs on our hand crafted oak and pine products, but we can put your own artwork and company logos on them to really make a statement! For yourself, to give as a gift, or as a promotional piece for your business, our ‘Badger-tough’ crates and boxes are a really clever and out of the ordinary idea. We like to say that we ‘think outside of the box’ here at North Rustic Design.
So check out our website and know that when you buy from us, you are getting the strongest, best built products that money can buy and the piece of mind that comes with our 100% guarantee!
large ammo crate closed