Do you always wipe the squeegee in the same direction? If so, I assume it's away from the taped end?
Always in the same direction. I have the stencil sized so there is about 2-3" of extra space above the apertures and between the tape. I lay out a blob of paste and I use the front of the blade to spread it out. I hold the blade at maybe a 45 (maybe even a bit lower) angle, and I apply quite a lot of downward pressure. As I pull it forward, it creates a "sausage" of solder paste that rolls along and fills in the apertures. I do it in a single pass... then put the blade aside with the sausage stuck to it, facing up of course. I carefully lift the stencil and remove the board, hold it up, and drop in the next board and repeat. Only problem is the "sausage" of solder paste gets longer/wider with each pass and eventually is longer than my blade - so I use a spare piece of FR4 to scrape it off the blade and back onto the top of the stencil and keep going. I pull the tape off and clean everything with acetone and a toothbrush.
It doesn't take long to master the process, and only maybe 1 in 200 panels is off and needs re-done. I've pasted literally tens of thousands of boards with the same "prototype" stencil I got about 6 years ago
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
I would like to get a nicer stencil holder like have been posted in this thread, but it seems like anything worthwhile starts at $1,500-2,000USD, and considering I ship about 10,000 boards a year and spend maybe 1 hour every 2 weeks pasting on average...it's just not high on my list of things to spend money on. I also use a toaster oven for reflow, and out of tens of thousands of boards it's reflowed - never a problem.