How tattoo machines work
What a tattoo needle looks like
What equipment is used
How the equipment is cleaned
The basics of ink
Tattooequipment is very sacred to a tattooist. The tools the tattooist uses determinehow well the tattoo will turn out.
It usually takes years for atattooist to find the equipment that works the best. Learning how to adjust theequipment to work in just the right way takes lots of time and patience. Yearsof trying new and different techniques and equipment have led tattooists to bevery secretive about the brand of tools and techniques they use.
In this chapter, you willget a glimpse of the equipment you will see when you get your tattoo. We willgo over the basics of how tattoo machines work and the equipment needed to runthem. This information is to help you relax when you get your tattoo by lettingyou get a little more familiar with
the process. You may notwant to have too many questions running through your head while you are waitingfor your tattooist to start tattooing you. Having a good understanding of theequipment you see during your tattoo will make your experience much less intimidating.The more relaxed you are, the better.
The advent of the twentiethcentury brought in many new inventions and innovations to make peoples livesmuch easier and more efficient. The widespread use of electricity brought withit many new inventions that were mass-produced and sold to the public. Westerntattooing at this time was taken out of the dark ages: electricity wasincorporated into the process of tattooing. This enabled tattoo artists to workwith greater speed, and more customers were able to be tattooed in one day. Theworld of tattooing was becoming more of an industry. Early entrepreneursstarted to make some real money from selling tattoo equipment and tattoodesigns.
A tattoo machine is called a "tattoomachine." It is a machine and there is no such thing as a tattoo"gun."
Most tattoostoday are done with an electric tattoo machine. There are plenty of greatartists who use the traditional methods (by hand) of tattooing; they keep the traditionalive and are sought out by tattoo enthusiasts. Many of these traditional
tattooists can still tattoowith an electric machine if they need to. If you walk into any tattoo shop inthe world, chances are you will be tattooed with a tattoo machine. Its muchfaster and more efficient for small designs.
New York Citytakes the credit for being the birthplace for the first electric tattoomachine. It was in 1891, when a man by the name of Samuel OReilly patented thefirst electric tattoo machine. Samuel OReilly opened his first tattoo shop in1875.
It was located in ChathamSquare, which is in what is now Chinatown, by the Manhattan entrance to theManhattan Bridge. OReilly took an electric engraving device, which wasinvented by Thomas Edison, and modified it to be able to tattoo. This devicewas based on a rotary system. The needle was attached to a circular spinningdevice to make it go up and down. OReilly could now tattoo faster than anyoneelse in the world.
Seeing theupper hand that the rotary machine gave him, OReilly quickly offered thedevice for sale along with colors and designs. This paved the way for manypeople to become tattooists. Tattoo
shops beganto spring up throughout the major cities and also set OReilly up with a smallfortune. Many other tattoo supply companies began to sell similar machines andequipment. More and more tattoo studios opened and the industry flourished.
Most moderntattoo machines arent based on OReillys rotary design. Todays machines arebased on electromagnetic coils, although some people still use rotary machines.Thomas Riley of London had the first coil tattoo machine patent, which he gotin 1891. This patent is closer to modern-day tattoo machines.
Over time the electrictattoo machine was tuned and perfected. Tattooists began to develop techniquesto make the machine run better. A well-run and well-tuned machine is imperativein making a great tattoo. It will cause less damage to the skin, so the tattoowill heal quickly and look like it did when you left the tattoo shop.
HowModern Tattoo Machines Work
The moderntattoo machine is a very simple device. It is a two-coil electromagnet, whichturns itself on and off through the breaking of its own circuit, like adoorbell. Electricity is fed to the machine by a clip cord via a power supply,which we will go over later in the chapter. The electricity magnifies theelectromagnetic coils and pulls a small metal bar, called an armature bar, downto the coils. The end of the needle bar is attached to the end of the armaturebar, so the needle is pushed down and into your skin. The instant the needlepushes down, the electric circuit is broken. The magnets turn off and thearmature bar and the needle go back up.
This happensso rapidly, it creates the infamous buzzing sound you hear in every tattooshop.
The needlepierces your skin approximately 50 times a second. Depending on the machine,the tattoo design, and the tattooist, that number varies. Some tattooists liketo run the machine faster while others prefer a slow and steady technique.
You Needn't Be Afraid ofNeedles
You dontneed to be afraid of this needle. Its completely different from the needlesyour doctor tortured you with when you were a small child. Hypodermic needlesare really just sharp tubes designed to either take stuff from you, or putsomething in you. Tattoo needles are only for putting something in you, butunlike the hypodermic needles that go deep into your veins and body tissue,tattoo needles only go into your skin. Tattoo needles do not go very far intoyour skin, which we learned in the previous chapter.
Needles arevery important in the tattoo process. They are the actual device that puts theink into the skin and causes that lovely feeling of tattooing. They must besterile and can only be used once on one person. Theymust be discarded after each use and stored in a sharps container until properly disposed
of by aspecial waste disposal company. Luckily, needles dont cost very much at all,so its no sweat just tossing them away.Tattoo needles are made up ofsmaller pins, which are soldered together in a grouping. The groupingis then soldered to a needle bar, which gives the needle that long shape. Thiscan be a timeconsuming process and is why some old-timers used to use the sameneedle all day and only make a new one when that needle was too dull to piercethe skin. Laws have been put in place to keep people from doing that. Ofcourse, by todays standards with todays diseases, the idea of reusing aneedle is disgusting. Tattoo artists can now simply buy new needles from themany supply companies available. It is easy and cheap to purchase ready-to-usetattoo needles of all different sizes.
Some artistsstill choose to make their own needles, which enables them to customize eachneedle the way they prefer it. There is a whole line of products tat- tooistscan buy that allow the making of needles to be much easier and faster.
There are two basic kinds of needles: liners andshaders. There is one needle for making the outline of the tattoo, and oneneedle to fill in or shade the tattoo. Many artists, depending on the design,will use different sizes of lining needles to have varied thicknesses in theline weight of the tattoo. Some artists also like to have a small shadingneedle set up so they can get into the small areas, and a larger shading needleto fill in large open areas of the tattoo.
A linerneedle is a group of pins that are soldered in a round formation. The needlegrouping has to be a round shape or the lines of the tattoo will have anuncontrolled calligraphy to them. This may look very unprofessional and couldruin a customers tattoo. The pins have to be in perfect alignment, or theywill cause extra damage to the skin. This can cause the tattoo to heal weirdlyand may possibly cause scarring. The last thing you want is a scarred tattoo.
As we have seen, there areso many different designs and styles in tattooing, as well as the differenttechniques to do them, that the liner needles must come in many sizes. Linerneedles are categorized by the number of pins in the needle grouping. Thenumber of pins in the needles runs from 1 to about 14 for liners. Some artistsmay use a larger needle than 14 for lining, but that is rare.
Shadingneedles are flat and square-shaped like a flat paintbrush. They are wide inorder to cover more space using fewer pins. The flat shape also helps to createsmooth shading. A magnumshader, or just mag as we say in the business, is the mostused form of shader. Mags are good for filling in and shading because the pinsare spread apart, so its harder to chew the skin than if the pins were justflat across.
Shading needles come in many sizes, ranging from 4 toup to over 41. These large needles are the size of your thumbnail. They aregenerally only used for really large tattoos like a back piece.
Some shaders are round in shape like a liner and canbe used to line as well. These are good for getting into little corners or tofill in up against a line. Some tattooists prefer round shaders for filling intribal tattoos. It is up to the artist as to which shape of shader best fitsthe needs of the tattoo.
Sometattooists use disposable tubes. These are made entirely of plastic. They aregood if a tattooist is on the road and doesnt have access to sterilizationequipment, which we will go over later in the book. Plastic tubes can wear downquickly from the friction of the needle, which is problematic for use on long tattoosessions.
A tube byitself is too thin and uncomfortable to hold. A device called a grip is used to give thetattooist a wider hold on the tube. Grips make it easier for a tattooist to control the direction of the needle. Gripscome in different shapes and sizes. Some are made of stainless steel, whilesome are made to be lighter in weight by using aluminum or a hard plastic.
It is veryimportant to have a clean and sterile environment for tattooing. Who wants toget tattooed in a dirty shop? Everything must be clean. The health departmentcan shut a tattoo shop down for being dirty, and its hard to tattoo if youdont have a place to do it.
The surface area in thetattoo station where your tattoo will be done must be sterile. Sometimescustomers will not understand that their blood cannot get on anything, and willallow their bloody tattoo to touch a chair or an armrest.
The ultimatemachine in sterilization is the autoclave. A properly run autoclave willdestroy every form of bacteria and virus with very, very few exceptions that wedont need to worry about.
They are usedin hospitals for sterilizing reusable equipment.
Every tattooshop should have an autoclave on the premises.
An autoclave works byheating water in a closed unit until it turns to steam. The steam then buildsup pressure and heat in the contained unit, pushing all of the air out. Thesteam is heated to 121 degrees Celsius. Bacteria and viruses are then cooked todeath as well as suffocated by the lack of oxygen. This lovely device allowstattooists to make sure their needles are sterile. Tubes will also becompletely clean and ready to use without the risk of infection.
Ink is theactual component of the tattoo. Without ink, you would have to settle forbranding and scarification. That just doesnt look as cool and it takes muchlonger to heal. One of the many trade
secrets in tattooing is theink. Where to buy the best ink, which will be the brightest, and which willlast the longest are some of the great secrets. Today, with so many tattoosupply companies, it is easy to find colors and it is up to the tattooist totry to find the best.
Black is themost common ink color used in a tattoo. It is usually used for the entireoutline and for the dark shading. Many people choose to have their entiretattoo done in all black, such as with a tribal tattoo. Black will last thelongest in the skin as it doesnt fade as fast as color can. Black makes theother colors stand out and look brighter.
The black inkused in tattoos is a carbon-based black. Carbon- based blacks are nontoxic sotheyre completely safe to use. Usually, some form of Indian ink is used fortattooing. All artists have their own formula for which black they use, so youmay see a difference from one artist to the other.
As with theblack ink, tattooists have their own formula for colors. Most tattooists willpurchase their inks from a supply company, which is quick and easy. There aremany different colors available for tattooing. The variety of colors givestattooists more freedom in coloring the tattoo.
Some tattooists will mixtheir own colors from nontoxic pigment powders. These pigments are mixed withwater and alcohol until the artist gets the desired consistency.
Many artists prefer thismethod, so they know exactly what is going into the ink they are using.
Many peoplelike to have only black and gray tattoos. Color is just not what they arelooking for. Perhaps they are afraid the tattoo will be too bold and brightwith color. Backgrounds for tattoos are usually done with a gray because grayisnt a strong color, therefore it will recede and let the other colors aroundit stand out. I have seen this with some Japanese tattoos where the backgroundsare done in black and gray.
Gray is an easy color tomake. It is like an ink painting or an under-painting. Gray is just blackwatered down to a certain percentage for varying tones. Some tattooists willadd some alcohol for antiseptic reasons. Another way to make a more opaquegray is simply to add a little black to white ink. This makes thatbattleship-gray tone, which can be slower to tattoo because it is thick but isbrighter in the skin than just a gray wash.
TheLeast You Need to Know
Modern tattoo machines areelectric and vibrate tiny needles that introduce ink into the skin.
There are basically twotypes of needles: one type for lining the tattoo and one type for shading thetattoo.
Professional tattoo shopstake great care to sterilize all equipment.
Each tattoo artist has aunique way of working and mixing ink.
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