So you have clean latex gloves on and you cut the stems close to the cap, right? How do you get a reasonably clean print? Here is one way. Just put the cap down on pristine post office Tyvek in a closed space!
The first pic is of those little 6 quart shoeboxes that I tend to use for damn near everything. New USPS Tyvek (inside box, non-printed side up) cut to fit. Lid keeps random stuff from dropping on it and keeps just a touch of humidity in that seems to help the printing process. There are some Texan caps from a straw log hanging out in the boxes shown here. Most of them have printed 2 or 3 nice prints, moving them every 5 to 10 hours until they stop dropping spores or until the cap shows any signs of bacterial infection (slimey wet, or black and the last print from a cap showing contams should be marked and quarantined in the agar-needed pile, or tossed since you have TONS of prints this way!)...Most caps will shrivel up and dry after 2 or 3 prints and stop dropping prints. Some strains will give only one print, some you will have to fight for two. Z and Texan seem to want to print 3-4 times IME. :) Once a sheet is filled, let it dry a day or two (Tyvek breathes well) and then store in your preferred method (ziplock, envelope, sealed box, impusle sealed foodsaver bag, cold-laminated into a bookmark, whatever rocks your world).
Here is an A-Typical example. The second picture is the first big cap from the second flush of Penis Envy on BRF cakes. Note that it has printed 3 reasonable prints in about 30 hours --YES, all from the same cap! --(moved in 10 hours or so per). It is starting to drop it's FOURTH print. Ya, I know I'm braggin, but that's what this forum is for!
The third pic is the remaining mushies in the second PE flush, maturing. The lighting is making the nice dark brown look black, but they are very healthy and still growing. There is even one on the bottom of the cake (I will name Atlas) that is pushing the cake up!
Okay, to get back on topic, for a single cap you can should use a small jar or cup to cover only a single print because a shoebox is too much volume for one cap and will dry out way too fast. You can even print in the bottom of a clean jar if you want. Tyvek is my preferred media, but foil, glass slides, acid free plastic, and even normal typing paper all work (with their own pros and cons).
Printing is easy. Most important DO NOT TOUCH CAPS WITH BARE HANDS. Use gloves or a sterilized pushpin or toothpick, but NEVER bare hands. Even washed hands will have way too many contaminants and may infect your cap before it can drop its load. :) If the cap looks a little dry at the start you can drip a drop or two of distilled water on it to boost the humidity a little. Keep it covered to keep crap from the air falling on it.
