Spaulding and Rogers?

[dari]

@ Nick

oh that was my wife spell checking by the way. when there are caps and proper spelling she's at hand.

Guilty as charged.

[Nick Colella]

Real classy Dari..i do think i got up to see if she needed anything other than the baby i had jut provided her....HA!!!

[dari]

Nick, I'm currently playing a game where I'm just the nanny, and Henry and Adeline's real parents will be here to pick them up any minute now. Knowing that I only need to keep them happy until they get picked up takes some of the pressure off!

[Nick Colella]

Nick, I'm currently playing a game where I'm just the nanny, and Henry and Adeline's real parents will be here to pick them up any minute now. Knowing that I only need to keep them happy until they get picked up takes some of the pressure off!

im gonna try that..thanks for the tip

[hogg]

im gonna try that..thanks for the tip

+1. Thanks!

[Bryan Burk]

after reading all of huck's book (the best part was how I turned to the "shading" chapter first, and the first thing is says is "most people will turn to this chapter first"), and tattooing myself with Kaplan machines, I realized that the next thing I needed to get ahold of was an old man with lots of tattoos and experience to show me how to do this... suffice to say I found one

I also realized that probably the most important thing was a lot of this (from my personal archive):

[briankelly]

i just got a s&r wolverine off of ebay for 60 bucks! new coils, abar, and contacts. the frame is super cheap, but that makes the machine super light too. after playing around with it, on and off, for a couple of weeks, i'm going to zap a customer with it tomorrow. wish me luck!

[Nick Colella]

unfortunate

[Julio Avila]

I wish you lots and lots of luck

[mario desa]

unfortunate

hahahahahaha

[purple haze]

I totally agree with why are they even being mentioned. now where can i get one of them splendid black toaster power supplies. te he he

[LeoKraft]

Granted the majority of what's in the catalogue is shit but can we talk about the sweet biker flash they have cornered the market on, I mean unless you wanna talk about some cherry creek flash

[purple haze]

Hi leokraft

geez . them flash sheets they had in the 80s catalogues was fuckin scary. was they all constructed by one guy ted nayden i think. did huck slip him something in his coffee when he wasnt looking lol. he must of had some sleepless nights with that zoned out shit bouncing round his nogging . give me j.d. crow torture any day of the week.

[Gloomy Inks]

As always, I'm showing up late to this, and will probably get a supreme typed ass kicking for it. Please bear with me as I have a little more "dirt" to toss myself.

My first machine was not an S&R, but a Superior Supply "Raven", I guess that's what they're calling them now. And a liner/shader no less. ABS frame, plastic bobbins, and it even came with practice skin which has always seemed to me like a pin bender.

When I thought I was "serious" I ordered a few Wasp machines, and you throw some Ringmaster springs on one, decent armature and run a good power supply (I run a CAT I ordered from Mike Skiver, who's mouth even made me blush on the phone and I grew up in a house full of sailors) and they ain't too bad.

My point though is this, and watching Tattoo Age with DeVit made it clear; an artist, once he knows how to tattoo, can run a real pile of a machine, providing that it's set up well. I don't know too many artists who don't tweek them anyway, unless they buy Aaron Cain (which are truly works of art, and can chip up your drive way if the jack hammer goes South) or the like.

I've used Chinese castings, they buy US scrap brass, and when all is said and done you have a pretty darned good machine. I have one I use quite a bit that was built this way, short stroke and I have no problems with it.

That being said there are some trash machines floating around out there, but was said in above post, Malone used them, as did deVita for a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also using two Col. Todd Jim Dandy machines as daily runners, with a strange, but highly effective shader/color packer set up that I honestly didn't ask Mr. Mora (Col. Todd's son) for, but I wouldn't trade for the world now. Makes it seem like you're drawing with markers, which is about my mental level anyways.

If you look into it Huck wasn't a great tattooer when he first started, and according to Stan Moskowitz Huck ripped off a lot of the Bowery Boys' flash, later filing suit against them for stealing his! Eddie Funk stated that he jumped the price up by buying out a canal street pigment maker's stock. When Eddie said they had been friends for a long time and he didn't want to pay $30 a pound, Huck replied, "That is the price... my friend."

He was good with a contract too, and didn't go along with most supplier's vow to not sell to scratchers. (What's a scratcher? A guy you might have to deal with having a shop near yours one day.)

I know most if not all of you will not share the view I have on this, but there is a place for the wannabe tattooer. He or she is in old carny parlance, just a "Forty Miler", and will find his or her place at local fast food place when their clients dry up.

Some may keep at it (Paul Rogers, Stoney St. Clair) and move to the next level and beyond, but a lot don't. Many of the old timers picked it up and taught themselves the basics. I guess though that with the boom in tattooers many of us are waiting for the bottom to drop out. Or being as we're the only artists that make money on a daily basis, we want to hold on to, or nail down our little corner of the world.

But really, none of us are a Van Gough or Vermeer as our reputations die, and only a hand full care to remember. Only photos, flash, and machines survive. This world makes me think more of mortality then any other job I've ever done. With the exception of working roofing, 'cause beer, heights and nail guns just don't mix, you know?

We're all fiercely independent, most free thinkers, but we get caught up in so much muck slinging that I'm sort of awed that conventions happen at all. As Ernie Sutton said to Zeke Owen when the convention was almost two decades away, "Because if you put us in a room, we'd kill each other."

It's art and commerce. Spaulding just made his pile, and who can fault him for that?

Does S&R have a 24/7 order line... I got that machine buying itch now (wink)

(If you must curse at me for this post, I do have a 0 to 100% scale that I grade on, with no curve, so make 'em good.)

Edited June 26, 2014 by Gloomy Inks
Really? Don't make me look like more of an ass, please!