Needles
If there was a survey asking tattoo artists about the most important piece of equipment you would find that almost every one of them would pick needles. You must have a good tattoo machine and inks, but if you don’t take your needles seriously then you won’t be ensuring the best possible tattoo.
The ideal needle
The truth is that there is no ideal needle but needles do have certain attributes that differentiates them from other needles. These include;
- Sharpness
- Straight arrow
- Flawless without marks, pits, or scratches
- In top condition
Most tattoo artists will only use a needle a couple of times at most. Once you have used a needle it will have developed many flaws that your naked eye won’t be able to see.
Having a good needle is important because it is what connects you to the tattoo you are designing. You tattoo machine will only be as good as you are, but how good you are will be determined a lot by your needles.
What tattoo needles look like
Your tattoo needle will be soldered onto the guns needle bar. The type of soldering to the needle bar will change depending on the type of work you are doing.
The two types of needle bar
- Liners
- Shaders
The two bars differ in that the shader bar has a flat end where the needles will be soldered while the liner bar is rounded; this is so the needles can form a smaller point for borders and lines.
Liners
You use liner bars for drawing thick outlines; either around objects or when you are creating design borders. The liner bar has needle ends grouped tightly together in order to create one line; this will put ink in a smaller area.
When you use a liner bar you will choose different numbers of needles; this will depend on how thick you want your line.
Shaders
As you might have guessed the shaders are used for shading. Unlike the liner, the needles don’t come together to form a single point but instead are situated so as to cover a wider area.
On a shader bar you will solder the needles on the needle bar one beside the other, but on a liner bar they will be soldered together in a circular design.
It is a good tip that when shading smaller areas you use a spread of 4 to 8 needles. You will have these on the normal flat shader bar. When trying to cover larger areas you will need to be using something like a 14-needle group.
The more needles you have the greater the area you can tackle. This means that if you want to shade a large area then put more needles on your needle bar.
As we mentioned earlier, if you want to use more needles then you will need one of the more powerful tattoo guns. Your 8-coil machine will only be able to manage up to 7 needles. If you need more than 7 needles you should get yourself a 10-coil machine.
