Mixing Inks

Hey everyone,

Just curious as to what ya’ll mix your inks on?
I am looking to set up my studio (which is actually part of my kitchen) and Im looking for something small and high to mix em on. Let me know if you could.

Thanks!!!

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A glass or marble slab.

A piece of 1/4 inch plate glass makes a good mixing surface — easily cleaned up. If you have a piece big enough to accommodate a brayer as well it will do double duty.

Bob

I mix ink on porcelain tiles. Easy clean up with solvent and they are just the right size.

You could also use a piece of glass. Being careful of the sharp raw edge if you were to use a piece from a picture frame, for example.

I buy a white smooth 12” square tile from Home Depot, the tiles are cheap.

Thanks everyone!! I should have clarified. Im going to get a good glass plate. I mean what type of table surface? I was looking to find something high enough and sturdy but not super $$$? Any suggestions? so appreciate it. i love this site :)

We have four BEKVÄM kitchen carts from IKEA. $59.99. Very sturdy. They are very handy to move around when we are doing Vandercook workshops where we want multiple areas where people can be mixing inks because of the rollers under two of the legs. We keep our rollers, ink knives, gloves, solvent, etc. on the shelves under them.

The top photo below happens to show two of them. The one in the back holds a furniture cabinet full of steel furniture. The furniture is over the wheels so it is possible to carefully move a very heavy object around a bit if necessary.

We coated it with polyurethane and made the shelves below solid so thing wouldn’t fall though.

The second photo shows two glass plates (which happen to be stacked on top of each other at the time to conserve space) we use for mixing ink. We have four of them also. You can see that in the photo we have two stacked on each other with a piece of marble we got from a kitchen store. The glass plates are shelves that we got from Lowes (only found them there and not Home Depot). They are part of a larger shelving system but you can buy them separately. They have four black legs (bought separately from the same area of the store) that fit in holes in each cornere that lifts them up about 1.5”. It is nice because you can slip a white sheet under it so you have a good background to mix against. And we also will put our PMS book under there or the paint swatch we’ve just mixed to compare to.

We’ve been thinking about taking one of the tables, cutting off the legs a couple of inches and putting one of our larger tabletop presses on it that we can roll around when we are doing our tabletop workshops.

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Lead Graffiti; what a great example! Thanks for the pics.

I’ve been using an old drafting table set horizontally; I’m taller so it’s nice to be able to adjust something to a comfortable height for me.

What I’d love to find is an old steel restaurant prep table. (Why, Oh Craigslist, won’t you give me one?)

If you buy a piece of 1/4” plate glass, the glass supplier should be able to “polish the edges.” That’s what my supplier called it, and it made the edges like those which you see on glass that is meant to have the edges exposed when in use. It makes the edges a lot smoother, but the corners can still be a little sharp. Although I didn’t think to ask the glass supplier to round the corners a little, maybe they could do that.

Those glass shelves with the legs I mentioned above cost about $10 at Lowes. Rounded corners and edges.

One of the other things I like about having the legs on the ones we use is that if your solvent runs over the edge a bit it just hangs there without running up under a lot of the glass.