Help color packing with a mag!
- Starter Willj3FL
- Start date
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Hello mate .
I’m not familiar with the mast , but I think 10 volts is quite high ?
ate you doing it in practice skin or real skin ?
That’s quite a big mag aswell.
If it practice skin it takes longer to pack thank real skin : more passes.
Have you tried a smaller mag ?
Might be it’s having a hard time pushing 21 needles in ?
S
I’m not familiar with the mast , but I think 10 volts is quite high ?
ate you doing it in practice skin or real skin ?
That’s quite a big mag aswell.
If it practice skin it takes longer to pack thank real skin : more passes.
Have you tried a smaller mag ?
Might be it’s having a hard time pushing 21 needles in ?
S
Moving from coils to rotary I found I needed more punch for colour packing and so higher volts was often part of that solution…I still get good results with this approach, though it requires more care in application; my rotaries don’t have give.
Coil packers often had 10 (even 12) wrap coils, meaning the magnetic pull was stronger and the needle hit harder, though magnetic dissipation took longer and the machine ran slower. This is why some think colour packing should be at a slower speed, but rotaries work completely differently. A longer stroke will create a harder hit, and the ‘punch’ on impact with the skin can be increased with speed. This can be necessary with larger needle configs.
I’m an advocate of getting colour in quickly, I often talk about getting ‘in and out’ as quick as possible while saturating the area…’enough’ trauma but no more. Sounds easy I know.
I used to think that I had to really sink colour at depth, but I’ve learned that this isn’t the case and my colours now heal brighter and quicker by working at the shallowest depth I can to get saturation, and very little bleeding, in application.
Single pass colour can achieve both of these things, BUT if you work light on the skin, shallow depth with proper ink coverage, you can pass twice in most cases, using a cross hatch technique that packs the colour in two directions.
On these points, the other realisation I had was to let the machine do the work, not relying so much on hand pressure to saturate. In fact I consider my hand pressure more as a way of reducing the trauma from the machine, holding it back.
I’m still learning every day like most of us, but I can say that my colour packing has improved massively having worked out some of the above. I tend to pack colour with a 17mag, up to a 23, my rule being the biggest size I can use without compromising accuracy.
Coil packers often had 10 (even 12) wrap coils, meaning the magnetic pull was stronger and the needle hit harder, though magnetic dissipation took longer and the machine ran slower. This is why some think colour packing should be at a slower speed, but rotaries work completely differently. A longer stroke will create a harder hit, and the ‘punch’ on impact with the skin can be increased with speed. This can be necessary with larger needle configs.
I’m an advocate of getting colour in quickly, I often talk about getting ‘in and out’ as quick as possible while saturating the area…’enough’ trauma but no more. Sounds easy I know.
I used to think that I had to really sink colour at depth, but I’ve learned that this isn’t the case and my colours now heal brighter and quicker by working at the shallowest depth I can to get saturation, and very little bleeding, in application.
Single pass colour can achieve both of these things, BUT if you work light on the skin, shallow depth with proper ink coverage, you can pass twice in most cases, using a cross hatch technique that packs the colour in two directions.
On these points, the other realisation I had was to let the machine do the work, not relying so much on hand pressure to saturate. In fact I consider my hand pressure more as a way of reducing the trauma from the machine, holding it back.
I’m still learning every day like most of us, but I can say that my colour packing has improved massively having worked out some of the above. I tend to pack colour with a 17mag, up to a 23, my rule being the biggest size I can use without compromising accuracy.
- Starter
- #4
It's on my skin trying to blackout an old tattoo and do a design with white ink!
For lining I have about 4mm hang, never ride the tube.
For packing it depends on what I’m doing. I have far less hang but I don’t ride the tube unless I’m doing really soft shading through layering. I have a bit more hang when I need to get into corners and work around stuff, so i can see, and less when precision is not as important. The reason for this is that I tattoo forwards and backwards (sometimes) and with too much needle hang on a mag, you can get a kind of twang through excessive movement of the needles.
Thanks for that excellent advice, will try that tonight on a simple black rectangle which is a cover of an nold tattoo (client request, would have preferred a motif but he's king client).
Thanks again, Peace,
DKJ
Last edited:
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