Sunday, June 24, 2012

Tubes


Tubes

An advantage of the plastic tubes is that the grips are poorly glued on,
this is good. Every ones hands are different. You can twist the grip on the
tube until the glue breaks and move it up or down so you can hold the
machine more comfortably. They hold strong enough that they won't go any
where once you moved them. Some of the disposable tubes are made with a
grip and tube out of one piece, these are not comfortable to use. The hard
grips hurt your hand after a while. You should look for the ones with the
different color grips per each size. Just like anything, the tubes come in all
different sizes and shapes as well as metal or plastic. Make sure to order the
corresponding tube for the needles you will be using. Lining tubes come in
round and diamond tipped. Diamonds are great because you have no needle
play. The bottom of the tube where the needle will ride is a v-shaped hole,
allowing the needle to sit right where it needs to be. Another artist a few
years ago taught me the right and left side of the diamond tip can be used as
a sight when running your needle flush. These points guide you when you can
no longer see the needle do to excess pigment. If you order an eight round
tube and try to use a three it will jump everywhere and your lines will look
like a three year old did them with a crayon. You can order and eight diamond
and comfortably use three's, fives, eights and fourteen rounds without them
wandering away. Some of the larger mag tubes have an open top all the way
back to allow for needle insertion. With larger mags the needle head is bigger
that the diameter of the tube so I guess it was a quick fix. The grip is just as
important as your tube. There are many shapes and sizes of grips as well. I got
use to using the standard size which is 1/2 inch. They make grips up to two
inches in diameter. The bigger the grip the less control you have but the more
comfortable it is in my opinion, but every one is different. The smaller the
grip the more your hand gets tired, but you have more control. So you need to
find a balance that works for you. If you’re not sure of what size to use then
stick with standard till you get use to things.
I do not recommend metal tubes unless you are in a shop environment
and have a tested auto-clave available for every day use. Metal tubes are
configured in the same way with the tips and sizes. The only difference in the
metal tubes other then weight and killing your client is that some of them
come in three pieces. The tube shaft, a tip, and a grip are all separate. The
screws of the grip hold the tip on the tube shaft. The reason some do this is so
you can buy a large stock of shafts and order what tips you need, this does
make it easier for cleaning. Did I mention the disposables just throw away? In
all fairness to metal tubes, they do seem to be better for grey wash and
realism tattoos. Really, I’m kind of torn on the issue and often use both
depending on what I am doing for the day.
To properly clean a tube you need to take it apart as much as you can.
Then you have to soak it in an ultrasonic machine. This is a machine that uses
sound and vibration to loosen any particles of blood and pigment. You don't
need this if you use disposable. After an hour of soaking you clean the inside
of the tube with a metal set of pipe cleaners that are made just for tattooing.
You can buy them from any supply catalog for about five bucks. Make sure to
clean the inside of the tip very well. Then you use a plastic nail brush to clean
the outside. Make sure to hold the brush so the bristles are down. If you don't
then soap will get in your eyes, remember they are not sterilized at this point
yet. When you use the pipe cleaners and the brush you need to use undiluted
green soap. Get a small cup of it so you don't contaminate the whole jug. As
you clean them one at a time, rinse them off well and place them on a paper
towel to air dry. By the time you get done, only a few should still be wet.
Place them in a properly sized sterilization pouch and seal it by removing the
strip on the adhesive and folding the lip closed like an envelope. After all of
your tubes are in the pouches date and initial the pouches then set them
aside for autoclaving. Piercing clamps are cleaned the exact same way. I can't
stress enough that if the dirty water gets in your gloves you have a seventy
five percent chance of getting a disease, and disposables are, you guessed it,
thrown away.
The biggest down side of metal tubes is that they are almost impossible
to properly clean. The needle head will wear on the end of the tip leaving
small scratches and grooves in the metal. These are perfect housings for
bacteria. Even after autoclaving you can still have disease if any biological
matter is left in the tube. The three piece tubes have a seam in them where
the tip attaches to the tube. Both pieces are held together by the metal grip.
This seam is not water tight. To properly clean these tubes you have to take
them apart all the way which almost no artist does. If you don't then while
you tattoo, water or pigment with blood and disease will get in this seam and
give I nice healthy coating of nasty under the grip. There is no way a brush
can get under the grip to clean it. Even after autoclaving if biological matter
exists on under the tube then the client

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