packing color

[bobbylink]

Please help! I’m having so much trouble packing color it’s starting to get to me. I’ve tried using my shader,I’ve used mags,my liner, shading needles, just about every combonation of needles and machine I could think of and nothing is working. I did a small tribal dragon on my self and wound up coloring it in with a 5r liner because nothing else worked. Any suggestions?

[TexasPT]

This is going to sound silly, but turn up your voltage and see what happens. I had the same issue once and a few volts fixed it.

I kept reading that my machines should run about 5-6v. Not all machines are created equal and those numbers really mean squat. You have to run your machine like IT needs to be run. For me on my shading set up that is round 7v. I run my liners a bit faster to accommodate for the longer stroke. Especially if you have Chinese made machines. Lower quality coils seem to take more juice to do the job.

Skin stretch will make a difference, too.

Hope this helps.

Mark

[bobbylink]

Chinese machines are what i have, i’ve buned out a set of coils already by turning up the voltage, but i have two sets of coils and two sets of springs (liner and shader) on their way. I’m hoping throwing a few quality parts in my machines helps. Thank you for the help

[TexasPT]

My chinese machines were not happy under 10v…

[Tarantula]

A few things that you can check: Are you stretching the skin enough? When you have a good stretch on you can feel the needles woring with your stretching hand. Angle of the machine, a 45 degree angle works better than an straight up and down. A slight film of vaseline on the area you’re working on helps the ink to pool and therefore more pigment is pushed in. Make sure your needles are washed out every now and then bits of skin can jam in between them and stop ink flow as can vaseline build up.
Just make sure you know when to stop, if you keep going over an area you’ll mangle the skin and end up scarring it. I have a tribal tat done by an amateur that is patchy and scarred to hell, its much better to do a touch up if necessary than keep trying to get the ink in.

If you don’t have Canvas’ book then I highly recommend it – there’s loads of help in there.

[bobbylink]

thank you for the tips, everything you just said i think back and i was doing it all…didnt stretch the skin enough, definately was holding my machine at a 90, and used hardly any vaseline at all, i did have my water handy though( mostly to prevent the pigment drying in my tip). i have the book and its probably the best thing that ive read since tyhe outsiders in high school. again thank you for your help. im sure ill be back with more questions.

[Author]

Posts