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for real man, if u really are an apprentice, you should ask these questions elsewhere

and stop doing blowouts on ppl

Not to restate the obvious but as an apprentice, why are you doing this stuff without the oversight of who ever you are learning under?
As a reference, I would not line with Eternal XXX, it has been known in he past to be too much for even solid fill and create huge halos and blowouts.

my mentor is out of the shop for a few days and he trusted me to do work due to good work that i have done in the past he still wanted me to keep it basic but he said if work came in that i felt confident enough to do that it was ok i know that this may seem like a very stupid post but im just looking for some more professional advice on what i might try to prevent this cause i want to put out the best work possible any advice that i could possibly get would be greatly appreciated so that i can prevent this from happening any further a good lining ink that might be best for me to use

internet forums are going to lead you more astray generally i think. if your mentor left you 'in charge' you owe him the phone-call. other wise you are walking the path of hard knocks. many people.. professionals .. will take offense to an 'apprentice' stepping over the person who gave you the opportunity to start with and can really throw wrenches in your learning curve. this forum has good information.. specific product info, ect.. many people would KILL to have a good apprenticeship. if your mentor reads this forum, im sure the apprenticeship has taken a turn for the worse now.

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Hey tat-apprentice,

Let me try and give you some constructive non condescending advise on your problem...
some of the main causes of blowouts are:
1. The angle of your needle entry maybe offset and you could be placing pigment offset in the underlying skin.
2: depth, you may not be going at the proper depth to the particular area of the body that your tattooing. The pigment needs to be placed within 1-1.5 mm, depending on the area of the body. for example the wrist would have less depth say 1 mm as opposed to the stomach at the other 1.5 mm.
3. speed. if your speed is off you can easily overwork the skin and weaken the first layer and thus you end up going too deep.
4. pigment. although there are some pigments that can be more difficult to put in and would be prone to blowouts. you can minimise this if you are very careful with your angle of entry, depth to body ratio, and speed of your machine.
5.stretching is important. if you don't have the proper stretching, you increase the likelyhood that you will not lay down a clean line with the first pass. and so you need to do a second pass. but you have to remember the more passes, the weaker the skin and you have to be that more careful not to go too deep. keep a close eye on your needles, and let the machine do the work, and float across the skin in this case, don't fall victim to the pressure of your hand overcompensating for the lack of stretching....
6. contours of the skin. you have to watch the dips and vallys of the skin, in some areas of the body you will have too move your pass up and down with each pass to compensate for this, if you forget to do so, and you keep a straight level pass, you risk some parts of the line to be to thick and some areas not taking the ink as well. again you will have to go back to clean, and you have to think about the "second" pass over the weakened skin.
7. needle size: the smaller the needle the easier it is to go too deep... you will learn this very quickly when at some point in your career you need to use a single needle.. the greater the grouping less likely you are of going too deep, however, the greater the grouping, combined with improper stretching, the more likely you are to over work the skin and cause blowouts..
8. having your inks become too diolutled. every time you do a pass and dip back into your ink cup, you are dioluting your inks a little bit with the blood and plasma from the body, when this happens thr lines do not look as dark and you are wanting to go back over them to clean, once again you have to compensate for the weakened skin. any time you see that the lines are not laying as dark, just pour another cup of black.. and start again...

well bro, hope that helps a little.

also, remember. don't let the negative advise discourage you. there are a lot of people on this forum that can help you and just as many that just want to shit on you...you don't need to prove anything. the fact that you have come to mikes forum to ask a question is validation enough that you are willing to ask questions and learn. also there is no mentor out there with have a brain would take offense to you coming to mikes forum to ask for advise. if you want to learn how to be a millionaire, you don't ask a homeless man sleeping in the street for advise. you ask another millionaire. so I can't think of anyone that can give you better advise than Mike. If you were my student. I would encourage you to seek as much information and knowledge as you can absorb, outside what you will learn in a shop. the key is to study the advise and ensure that what you are being told outside your apprenticeship is sound advise, and before putting it into practice ask your mentor if it can be added to your existing knowledge of what he/she is teaching you...

take care bro.

Stephen Stacey

Thank you very much Stephen and that is the exact reason I came to mikes forum I knew that there was going to be people that would make jabs at this post it's an unfortunate part of the business I have grown to realize but I also knew that there would be people like yourself that would actually take the time to give me some quality advise and I strongly appreciate that thank you again

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most already said by superan but one point is still open: do you ride the needle off the tip of the grip or do you already feel confident enough to ride it off the needle point? because the first is sometimes a bit of dangerous in case of changing between different parts of skin/body during one line. for example. you make a line from the outside of the arm- where the skin is more resistant to all kind of influences like bruising and thus quite a bit harder to penetrate but also can stand quite a bit more- to the inner arm- there the skin is much softer but according to that can stand much less "violence": the same pressure, depth, speed and stretch during changing differently textured parts of the skin, the result will show a big difference. especially when riding it of the tip, where you got nearly no real "feeling-feedback" and thus can`t react directly to the maybe even fluently increasing change of skin "quality"- and according to that: that can even be hard to notice riding the needle point, although you will have much more feedback-feeling than riding the tip.

sorry for my bad english, i`m no native speaker, but i hope i could explain that aspect in a somehow understandable way.

Hello, this is the first time I have actually reached out about my problem. This is a bit embarrassing because I have actually been tattooing for about 18 years and in the last 6-7 months for some reason all the sudden I'm having problems with blown out lines as well. I have no idea what it is. My dad taught me how to tattoo in his shops when I was in high school and for most of the last decade I just take my machines apart and rebuild and well, you know how that works.. But yea, when I was buying machines back then, Time Machine was favorite type and I had alot of springs and o-rings and capacitors and everything.. I'm sorry this is so long, just trying to be specific. Anyway, I finally ran out of springs so I ordered some more from Time Machine and then I started having these problems, but around the same time, I had switched from indian ink for lining to Eternal trip black. I had also been using apogee power packs, also a product of Time Machine. In short, I have replaced everything, new control x power supply, couple flatline Time Machines, everything.. And even still I am having problems. Very frustrating and hard to ask help about because not only am I an experienced tattoo artist but I actually have owned my own shop and been in business for 7 years. I have carpal tunnal also and some arthritis but I have had these for years and never had these problems before.I used to ride the tube when lining but since i have been having these problems I have started riding the tip more because this problem is causing a psychological setback as far as comfort and confidence goes. I have to say that I have a feeling that the Time Machine equipment I bought does not seem to be of the high level caliber as the machines I used to get from them.. I have 11 Time Machines. My biggest question when I came to this forum was to ask who makes the best machines these days.. Sorry again about the long post, just really frustrated with this.

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Hey bro,

Sometimes getting use to new machines and ink can really cause some problems, it usually takes quite a few tattoos to overcome the natural habits you have been use to for so many years.
some of the things you need to focus on now that you have made some changes are.

1. the new springs you are using may be hitting harder than before, even if they are the same gauge. try to adjust the hit by bending the back spring up a little to see if that helps. also play with your throw to see if it helps also.
2. the eternal triple black ink will lay in different that the indian ink. some people don't have success with it, some do. the key is now that you have changed ink, you will need to adjust both your hand speed and the hit of your machine to find the new sweet spot for laying this new ink... start out running your machine slower than you normally do and also slow your hand speed to compensate for the slower running machine.. this will help to minimize the damage to the skin and still help in getting a clean one pass line... as you get use to the new ink, begin to turn up your speed and adjust your hand speed until you get to a overall speed that you were accustom to before, this may not be the exact same as before, but until you are able to make the adjustment on the fly, this is my best recommendation for now...also be mindful of lines that you may need to clean up,, although this may not have been an issue before, cleaning a line with you new machine adjustments and ink may be more aggressive on the already damaged skin. so in this case, keep your hand speed up...
3. your stretching may also need to adjust. seems strange I know, but if your current setup is different than before, you may need to stretch the skin a little less than you did before, because it seems as though the ink is going in much more efficiently than before, and in your case too efficient and you are causing more damage than usual and thus you are now getting blowouts.... this comment may sound a little ridicules, but when I am trying out new machines, I notice that in some cases the ink seems to flow great when I'm doing black and grey, and darker than i'm use to.. so to fix this I have lightened up on the stretch and it has helped to smooth out the lighter tones... although this is directed towards shading, the principles are still the same with lining when someone is getting use to new equipment and inks... sometimes I can get the handle on a new machine and inks in a day or two, some times it takes me a month....
4. your needle hanging out further than you normally do is a great idea, for two reasons, 1, you can see the depth of the needle penetration, and 2, you can see how much the skin is flexing or how much your needles may be bouncing off the skin... watch this very closely, even if you have to hang the needles out a little more to get a better view...
5. there are a lot of great machine out there, for coils machines, I would suggest. #1 (top choice)--Aaron Cain,,,, FK iron, Iko from France, Dringenberg, Joshua Carlton . Just to name a few, for rotaries, (if you ever want to dabble in that area), Stigma, bishop, Inkjecta, neotat, spektra, dragonfly, ect,ect.... all these are great machines...

well I hope that helps a little bro, Take care...


Stephen Stacey

so-- i have no where near the tattooing experience that you do.
i do own fowler machines
i also have carple tunnel issues and have some information on newer inks
and also have fki liner and shader machines, and i use straight suro kumi ink for all blacks
the reason is that it is a traditional black tattoo ink, cuts with water, and does not contain the same toxins or heavy metal contents to achieve 'black' as some newer inks
it is true, that there is a trade off---it is really more like dark,dark grey than black

the recent problems that i think veteran tattoo artists are having with new blacks has to do with the inks themselves

since the introduction micro technologies; pigment composition has changed, and black has the smallest 'color beads' --like nano technology-- to make it 'blacker' than traditional black inks achieve.
smaller beads move more freely and so these blooms/blooms are more likely.
about the fowler and fki
i like my fowlers just fine. very well built and precise machines
but they are 'back-up' or 'specific use' in placement in my arsenal
the fk's are the machines i prefer in almost every situation except straight outlining as they are extremely soft hitting but a bit 'slow'. (i ride tip on all, but fk's are very user friendly and a joy to use)
anyway, when i hear about guys, with more experience than me, having issues with blow outs (that i don't have) i can only assume the issue is a new development in ink products rather than something that YOU are doing
and ink composition has been 'engineered' recently, so maybe that is it

Man you guys are awesome, I really appreciate the feedback cuz this has been driving me nuts for months thinking maybe I'm just forgetting how to do stuff right or something. I'm more of a keep to myself low profile guy so it's been really hard working up the courage to just ask. Also to hear that I'm not the only "veteran" having these problems makes me feel a little better, old lol but better.. Makes a lot of sense what you're saying about the inks cuz I used to be smooth sailing with the indian ink and then all the sudden just couldnt find it anywhere anymore. I think I will invest in maybe a cain liner and fk shader, I have read a lot about both. Anyway thanks again for the tips guys!

Whenever I get new ink, machines or even a new power supply it takes a little bit of fine tuning to get used to how the new equipment works. The eternal ink youre using now might be much more concentrated than the indian ink you had previously and could attribute to the blowouts, especially if you're getting used to the feel of a new machine. Try tuning your power until the gun sounds like its just barely running at a buzz and work slowly from there, turning it up as you feel comfortable or need to until you're comfortable enough going at the speed you're used to. Every time I get something new it takes a little bit of getting used to and I'd imagine its not any different for even someone whos been in the business as long as yourself. Just give it some time to get used to it and stay confident!

Hello,
I am lost I am an apprentice at my dad's tattoo shop and have been doing it for 6 months now. When I first started tattooing I was doing very well and progressing then in the last 2 months I have been having issues especially with blow outs. I work of the tip of my needle and I make sure I don't outline at a an angel. I did have my power supply up too high, and I lowered it but I just did a tattoo of old english lettering and the whole thing blow out. My dad watched and didn't notice anything that would have caused it and I followed the "text book" why of doing the outlines and I don't see how it happened. We thought perhaps the person is one of those rare cases that their skin just does it but another artist did a tattoo above what I did and no blow outs. Sorry I feel like I am rambling but I am out of ideas.

Try retuning your machines, sometime the hit of the machine will cause a blowout.try changing to a lower gauge on your back spring, maybe just one or two steps down, and start your machine at a lower voltage and work you way up, as an apprentice you need to take you time and work up progressively, not everything happens all at once. Machine tuning should be a valued part of your apprenticeship and getting your machines running the way that suits you best. Don't be afraid to try different spring gauges and what not, I know personally that I run certain machines completely opposite of what is suppose to be the "norm" and they work perfectly for me for what I need them for. Hope this helps.

Justin
Owner Operator
Image Empire Tattoo
Glendale AZ

Try retuning your machines, sometime the hit of the machine will cause a blowout.try changing to a lower gauge on your back spring, maybe just one or two steps down, and start your machine at a lower voltage and work you way up, as an apprentice you need to take you time and work up progressively, not everything happens all at once. Machine tuning should be a valued part of your apprenticeship and getting your machines running the way that suits you best. Don't be afraid to try different spring gauges and what not, I know personally that I run certain machines completely opposite of what is suppose to be the "norm" and they work perfectly for me for what I need them for. Hope this helps.

Justin
Owner Operator
Image Empire Tattoo
Glendale AZ

I've also been having problems with blow outs i just started using starbrite out line when this problem started the ink i used before was pelikan yellow label and never had this problem when i used it so i'm going back to it.

Silverback ink. My favorite for lining, shading and for white highlights. I never have blow out problems with silver back. I've been using it since I started 4 years ago and haven't bothered trying anything else, don't feel I need to. It's great