Stencil

In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.

The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly and rapidly produce the same letters or design.

To be reusable, they must remain intact after a design is produced and the stencil is removed from the work surface.

[3] This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be colored by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black and white.

In the pochoir process, a print with the outlines of the design was produced, and a series of stencils were used through which areas of color were applied by hand to the page.

Stencils templates can be made from any material which will hold its form, ranging from plain paper, cardboard, plastic sheets, metals, and wood.

Stencils are frequently used by official organizations, including the military, utility companies, and governments, to quickly and clearly label objects, vehicles, and locations.

When objects are labeled using a single template alphabet, it makes it easier to identify their affiliation or source.

For example, the anarcho-punk band Crass used stencils of anti-war, anarchist, feminist and anti-consumerist messages in a long-term graffiti campaign around the London Underground system and on advertising billboards.

One use of military stencils was the application of playing card designs to USA Airborne helmets during World War Two as a method to identify regimental units.

Stencils are also used in micro- and nanotechnology, as miniature shadow masks through which material can be deposited, etched or ions implanted onto a substrate.

These stencils are usually made out of thin (100-500 nm) low-stress Silicon nitride (SiN) in which apertures are defined by various lithographic techniques (e. g. electron beam, photolithography).

Stencil lithography has unique advantages compared to other patterning techniques: it does not require spinning[clarification needed] of a uniform layer of resist (therefore patterns can be created on 3D topographies) and it does not involve any heat or chemical treatment of the substrate (like baking, developing and removing the resist).

Found in 2017 by archaeologists, the only other recorded examples are at Nielson's Creek in New South Wales and at Kisar Island in Indonesia.