Build Your Own Tattoo Gun
Common Sense Warning
This article is a re-print from SoLJo. When you're tattooing, especially with a home-improvised device, there are many things that can go wrong even at the best of times. Hideous scarring, local infections, body-wide infections that result in fevers, vomiting and other nastiness, parental scalding and exclusion, your inability to join the armed forces (they don't accept people that have "I kill Jews" tattooed on their foreheads) and other institutions, just to name a few.
Don't share a home-made gun, with anyone. In addition to infection, you also run the risk of things like Hepatitis, and AIDS. Real guns have disposable needles for a reason. If you could afford an autoclave, you could afford a real gun. Don't share it.
I got a few hits to this page from a news article (which is weird because I can't find the referring link anywhere) about some silly ladies who paid someone to tattoo them with a scratcher similar to the one these instructions describe, and later got sick, which prompted me to add this warning. Tattooing for money with a homemade gun like this is illegal almost everywhere, as it well should be - see warning above about sharing them. If you want to make money tattooing, do an apprenticeship with real equipment, unless your target audience is going to be in Cell Block C.
My roommate showed me how to do this. i now have inscriptions in my body. Thank you very much. Bastard.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 x low "E" string from an electric guitar. the one on the top, that makes the lowest note.
- 1 x clicky lead pencil. the kind where you feed it a tiny piece of graphite and click it to make more come out.
- 1 x R/C motor. it needs to be strong enough so that you can't stop the shaft with your fingers. being light is a bonus.
- 1 x 12v power supply, or whatever your motor is.
- 1 x shirt button.
- 1 x fine file
- 1 x match book
- 1 x felt tip pen like a pilot like thing that leaks from paper when wet
- some electrical tape
- something to make an L shaped bracket from. the metal piece from your pencil usually works well.
- a solid-stick type deodorant. we got some old spice shit that works nicely.
- some WATER BASED ink. tattoo artists recommend pelikan ink. see warning below if you find yourself eyeing off BIC pens.
STEP ONE - construct the needle.
take the filler cap from the top of the pencil, and remove any graphite. you should now have a fine tube running down the pencil. next, take your E string. mash it with some pliers or your fingernails if you're feeling into chinese fingernail torture, until the wire wrap from the outside comes loose on the end. start to peel it off, so you're left with a thin wire. you need about 10 inches of it (this may be an over-estimate, but shut up).
thread the wire down through the pencil as you would usually feed graphite into it. if it doesn't go through, you may need to smash up the pencil's springy goodness to make it work. it needs to move reasonably freely, but if it's not super freely don't worry the friction from the motor will soon make it "wear in".
STEP TWO - mount your motor bracket.
bend a small piece of reasonably stiff metal into an L shape. it needs to be stiff enough to hang the motor off of, but not so heavy that you can't hold the pencil with the motor hanging on it. i taped mine to the pencil shaft with electrical tape. you should have the pencil looking like an L now.. with the non-writing end having a small piece of metal poking out of it, like this:
===================================================__ ,==|
--------------------------------------------------------------- / |
^ ===================================================~~ | |
| |~~~~~~~~~ ^ | |,
| `--- pencil your finger, - | |
w | ^lt;-- bracket getting stabbed
i | because you're stupid
r |
e | fear my early morning ascii
STEP THREE - buttonize your motor.
the shirt button will act as a crank (for lack of better term) for your needle. heat the button up, and push one hole over the shaft of the motor. when it cools, it should stay put. if not, glue it in place. when you apply power to it, it should feel like a vibrator. please refrain from using it for sexual stimulation.
STEP FOUR - hook your power shit up.
connect the power supply's wires to the motor, and plug it in and ensure it works and the connections are good. it doesn't matter which polarity you use, unless you happen to have a polarized motor. make sure they're connected firmly, and insulated just in case.
STEP FIVE - mount your motor.
apply the motor to the top of the bracket so that the button is in line with the wire. attatch it with a generous helping of electrical tape, or maybe some zip ties if you're feeling frisky. it should look vaguely like this:
===================================================__
,----------------------------------------------------------
-|-|- ===================================================~~
| | |~~~~~~~~~
___|___|
| |
| |
| |
|______|
; ; -- wires attach here.
the idea is that when the wire's hole of the button is up, the needle has very little (but still some) poking out of the tip of the pencil, when it fires up, it should rocket in and out of the tip about a quarter of an inch. the speed will vary depending on the motor you use but basically the faster the better, but you don't want the motor to slow down when you're dragging it through your skin.
STEP SIX - sharpening it.
you can skip this step if you like pain. if it's sharp, it'll hurt a little less. basically, you want to file a needle point onto the tip of it, as sharp as you can get it. then, you use the striking surface of a matchbook to file it down even finer, and remove any barbs from the tip of it.. you may not be able to see those little barbs, but trust me you *will* feel them.
once you have it nice and sharp make sure there's no little fangs of wire hanging off it that could break off in your skin. that means clean it.
STEP SEVEN - inking yourself.
put some ink (pelikan ink 1oz comes with a nice built in eye-dropper) into the cap from a soda bottle. i recommend burning the needle of your gun before stabbing yourself. turn your gun on, and dip the very tip of the needle in the ink, letting it dance around a bit but try not to have it hit the bottom of the cap. if it hits lightly, it could dull the tip. if it hits hard, it'll flip the cap full of ink *everywhere*.
move the gun (probably nervously) towards your intended skin area, and just start doodling. just kidding.
THE REAL STEP SEVEN - making a template.
find a good quality, leaky-ink (that means the ink will come off the paper if it gets wet) felt tip pen. print something out on really thin paper (the kind that only feeds through a laserjet 6L one sheet at a time. i highly recommend thinking about whatever it is you want to print out, as it'll be on you pretty well forever. anyway, print it out, and then flip the piece of paper over.. holding it against a lit glass surface like a window with an external light on or failling that your monitor, traceover the important lines with your leaky pen. make sure to apply plenty of ink.
next, figure out where you want it. if the area of your skin you want it on is hairy, shave it. there's no shame in it, it *will* grow back. grab your deodorant and smear it all over the now smooth surface. reasonably thick like. lay the piece of paper, ink side down, on your skin, and run the deodorant stick over the surface of the paper. press reasonably hard, but be careful you don't shift the paper as you do it.
peel away. with luck, you should be left with an inky imprint on your skin. if not, you either used the wrong pen, or the wrong paper. experiment.
STEP SEVEN AND A HALF - inking yourself if you're NOT a fuckwit.
burn the needle of the gun for a few seconds, then turn it on. let the needle dance around in the ink as explained in the first step seven. then, start from whatever corner of your work will mean that your hand will only rest on a line you've already inked. try and work slowly, flowing along lines as steadily as you can. don't rub over a line you haven't inked yet, as it'll probably disappear.
if you're like me and tend to sweat when you're being stabbed repeatedly, then i recommend just scratching over the entire design quickly, only using a fraction of an inch of the needle. this will cause the skin to "puff up" so you can see it even if the design disappears.
TIPS:
depending on the thickness of the skin in the area you've chosen, push the needle in reasonably deep. for example, right on the spine you'll probably not want to go very deep, as with the back of your wrist, and anywhere bony. fleshy places like calves, thighs, breasts, etc can be deeply stabbed, though not too far.
if you can feel the needle "fish-hooking" your skin, it's not sharp enough, or has been bent by tapping it on something hard. it's time to stop and re-sharpen.
IF YOU FIND YOURSELF STARING A BIC PEN BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO POOR FOR INK
...then DONT. most ball-point pen inks are petroleum based (so i'm told, we used them). your body will attack the ink sitting in your body (which is considered an invasion) and eat it up. only large concentrations of it will remain, uncertainly.. leaving patches of ink and if you're really unlucky, globs of dried up ink under the surface that can even become infected.
you may get lucky and find a ball-point pen which will work and stay in just fine. it's been done. but chances are like us you'll just end up with a stack of stupid looking scars that you'll go over when you buy real ink.
if you *really* like pain and want something cool, kenny has some tattoos that he did with a broken-open neon "gel" pen. the kinds of pens that glow under UV light. if you ink with those, they may stay in.. and if they do, they will glow under a blacklight. beware of two things though: firstly, it hurts like a sumbish. secondly, the colors tend to change.
DOES IT HURT?
yes. it does hurt. anyone who tells you it doesn't is lying. you can feel it, it's not ticklish. having said that, unless you're a complete pussy, it's not something you can't deal with. in fact, i barely felt the needle stabbing me, it wasn't until i started dragging it along that i really felt it.
what's it feel like? well my description is like dragging a scalding hot scalpel through your skin. it's more of a burning sensation than anything. as i said, unless you're a complete pussy, it's not something you can't put up with.
THAT'S A WRAP
now you can give yourself prison-style tattoos to go with your fake story about getting locked up for hacking. this text has been written once, from top to bottom, and has not been proof-read. if i stopped to proof read it, it would probably never get submitted. |PaRiS| has been bugging me forever for it, and this is the best you're going to get. enjoy.
Common Sense Warning
This article is a re-print from SoLJo. When you're tattooing, especially with a home-improvised device, there are many things that can go wrong even at the best of times. Hideous scarring, local infections, body-wide infections that result in fevers, vomiting and other nastiness, parental scalding and exclusion, your inability to join the armed forces (they don't accept people that have "I kill Jews" tattooed on their foreheads) and other institutions, just to name a few.
Don't share a home-made gun, with anyone. In addition to infection, you also run the risk of things like Hepatitis, and AIDS. Real guns have disposable needles for a reason. If you could afford an autoclave, you could afford a real gun. Don't share it.
If you're not so brave...
- I've seen professional quality guns on ebay for a reasonable price.