Well, today I'll focus again on tattooing, this time writing a bit about the tattooist's best friend, though in some cases it can turn in your worst nightmare, especially when experience and/or the right training are not on your side. I'm talking about tattoo machines, which come in all different shapes, colors, frame details and coating, functionalities, weights, brands, some are hand-made while some are massively produced, all these different aspects having a huge influence on the quality of the machines. Quality in a tattoo machine means you won't be struggling with it but you will be tattooing with it.
But despite all the differences, tattoo machines keep the same basic system they used to have about 100 years ago, it hasn't really changed that much, why would it? It's still the best way to put ink on your skin. There have been some attempts to replace it, the so called rotary machines, but the coil ones still seem to do the work better, though the work to keep the latter tuned up is similar to that of keeping your sweetheart happy. Now, I know the majority of people reading my blog are not tattooist/tattoo artists themselves, but my own customers ask me plenty of questions about the equipment very often, so I thought posts like this now and then could be of interest to some of you out there, or perhaps even to tattoo apprentices.
But just to give a bit of boring background, a tattoo machine works this way: You press a footswitch, afterwards, electricity passes through the machine's coils, causing electromagnetic charge to build up in them. Within a short fraction of a second, enough charge has accumulated to make the magnetism in the coils powerful enough to put the so called "armatu
re bar" (which is a little bar on top of the coils which holds from the front end another round thinner bar to where the needles are soldered) and into contact with the coil cores. In doing this, the machine's main circuit is broken and the charge in the coils is allowed to empty out, causing them to lose their magnetism. Without the magnetic pull, the spring tension (springs are small pieces of usually steel stock bended in a way so that they create tension between the armature bar and the contact point, affecting force, speed, stroke length, etc.) immediately pulls the armature bar back up toward the contact screw, where the cycle can begin again. In most machines this will happen several thousand times per minute. - Refer to Guy Aitchison's book Reinventing the Tattoo, chapter 6.5 -
So anyway, this sounded maybe like I was talking Mandarin (unless of course you speak Mandarin), which is ok if you are reading my blog out of curiosity, but the incredible thing is that I have met tattooist with over a decade in tattooing which don't have a clue how the hell they work!! Seriously, is like having a guitar player who has no clue on how to tune the guitar up nor the names of the strings, order, etc, yet, these people are out there "tattooing". A tattoo machine is the main tool for a tattooist/tattoo artist, and as the whole process itself, knowing how it works is imperative when it comes down to our responsibility. It just blows my mind how some people out there believe they can get really good without knowing at least the basics of it.
Generally, there are 3 types of machines (or set-ups) in terms of functionality, liners, shaders and color packers, though basically any machine can be tuned up to carry out any of these functions, they usually come "out of the oven" with a particular set-up already on place. I'm not going to explain the differences between the three of them nor how they should be tuned and why because I don't want to give "easy access" to this information to any scratcher wanna-be out there coming across my blog. The reason is, I consider very important to get educated on the subject of whatever you are claiming you are!!! I don't consider tattoo apprenticeships as the only way to get there (though it is in my opinion the best one), I know some incredible artists who got there without one, but all of them spent hours and hours of self research on the matter (this includes hygiene!!!), experimenting many times on practice skin, oranges, pig skin or themselves and now and then even in friends (and I make clear that I don't suggest you do that last one), asking the right questions to the right people, watching closely top-notch artists during conventions, reading books, participating in tattoo forums, etc, you name it.
Giving this kind of info "for free", which doesn't necessarily relate to money, is opening the door for people to start tattooing before being ready. Getting to the point of understanding a tattoo machine is like making that hot cheerleader going out with you for dinner, taking her home and having sex doggy-style. And it might be even harder than that! Each skin, each needle configuration, each tube, grip, rubber band, ink consistency, electric current just to mention a few, are variables that play a determinant role on how a tattoo machine runs, and these are all variables that change every single time you tattoo, some of them even change several times during the same session!! Meaning you really have to know how to deal with it, you get them in a good day, they can be your best buddies, get them in the wrong one and they can be your worst nightmare. That's why tattooing is not like grabbing a crayon and making scribbles on your child's notebook, but rather an intense job, fucking intense in deed!! And a tattoo machine is only one stuff of that whole process, though probably one of the toughest ones (if not the toughest) to master, whatever that means.
So yeah boys and girls, don't start tinkering with your 90's walkman to make a cheesy rotary piece of crap to "scratch" your best buddy in your kitchen table but rather go and contact an artist you look up to (don't just send messages randomly, do research, make sure the artist knows what she is doing), if you have the right attitude and talent (though I still struggle to clearly define that last word), you might get the chance of knowing the intimacy of this craft from her, and if it doesn't go on the first try, keep looking, relocate if necessary, there is an immense amount of quality out there, it will be all worth it at the end. If you have the right instruction in whatever you really want to do, it will save you years of suffering to yourself and unnecessary damage (at least in this case) to others, you won't get into bad habits that will be hard to get rid off later on and you will surely have the best shot at becoming good, because in this industry you have to aspire to be fucking good, otherwise, you better find something else to do!!
Rode
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