tattoo-radar.com Tattoo Equipment and gear reviewsTrying to get Tattoo Radar back up to snuff. Also working on MyFirstTattoo.info as well. You can see the progress by visiting these sites! There are some articles about power supplies and after care that have been recently added. If you are interested in writing gear reviews – let me know!
Good Deal for Price
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
March. 16, 2013
By UCTattoos.com
This review is for: Inkstar Apprentice Kit Product TK13.
I purchased this kit from: http://www.tattoomachineequipment.com. As always it was shipped via expedited shipping, and I received it in impeccable time. I have ordered from this website before, and I plan to do so again. I ordered it Thursday, was shipped Friday, and received the following Thursday! Great timing. From start to finish the customer service is amazing as well. However, this is the older version of their new kit product TK13B. I may purchase the new kit, and see review the major differences.
Gear Review – TK13 Tattoo kit – Tattoo Kit in BoxAs far as the kit goes it’s a pretty good kit for the price! It comes with a lot of stuff. Basically everything you need to start tattooing. This kit contains: A total of three Inkstar tattoo machines comprising of an Inkstar Colt in black meant for lining, an Inkstar Colt in Silver meant for shading work and an Inkstar Chief in silver frame meant for shading. The three machines allows for a versatile setup of one dedicated liner, one shader for coloring and one shader for black and grey. Also included is a Voltz power supply which is a generic version of the Valsturd Voltz. The Voltz power supply comes complete with a foot pedal and clip cord. Included is the Tattoo Supplies and Equipment Crash Course which explains what all the gear and supplies in your kit do and how to troubleshoot them. The Holy Flash 6000+ CD is an excellent source of inspiration or direct printing of designs you practice on practice skins, pig skins, etc.. Kit comes with a silver and black aluminum grip with tube stem. There are 3 packs of ink cups, total of 3 different sizes in #9, #12 and #15. One autoclave-able ink cup holder designed to fit all 3 different ink cups that comes with the kit. A full set of 8 Freedom Ink practicing ink in white, black x 2, red, purple, green, blue and yellow. A tattoo machine springs repair kit is included. This package comes with a Hildbrandt premium assorted needles pack that includes the following needles: 3RL x 5, 5RL x 5, 7RL x 5, 9RL x 5, 5RS x 5, 7RS x 5, 9RS x 5, 5M1 x 5, 7M1 x 5 and 9M1 x 5. In addition to the tattoo needles pack, included with this package is a disposable tubes pack which includes: 3R x 5, 5R x 3, 7R x 3, 9R x 3, 5F x 2, 7F x 2 and 9F x 2. There are two disposable tube grips, an RT3 and RT5. Another handy equipment this kit comes with is the tattoo machine springs repair kit which comes with an extra set of back and front springs. There is a full set of 10 stainless steel tubes/tips included and a tubes cleaning brush set to clean them with. Other basic supplies included are a pack of grommets, O rings, rubber bands and practice skin.This is a lot of great stuff for a beginning. Obviously now one has to either assume the purchaser of this kit either has an autoclave, or plans to purchase some disposable grips go with this kit.
Gear Review – TK13 Tattoo kit – Tattoo KitThe machines are pretty decent. Solid frames, with some mediocre parts. Remember this is an apprentice kit. It’s not made for tattooing people, so the parts on the machines aren’t the greatest. The great thing about coil machines is that you can change the parts! I also noticed on the Inkstar Colt Black Liner that the contact screw was bent making it hard to tune. This already needed to be replaced. One machine, the Inkstar Chief, actually seemed to have some better parts, and ran pretty smoothly!
Tattoo kit Machines ReviewThe power supply is actually pretty solid as well. It has some nice bulk, and weight to it. It’s sturdy, and stable, and seems very durable. While tuning the liner I had no problem finding a good voltage, or did I have trouble with consistency. It’s a very good power supply to get with a tattoo kit of this nature. A lot better than what I got when I first started!
Tattoo Supplies and Equipment Crash Course was a pretty good read. It is exactly what it says, though. It’s a crash course.It is the bare bones information printed on black, and white sheets. Some of the images are grainy, and hard to make out due to the compromise on quality. Also the majority of the book is more of a catalog for the website rather than anything. I was rather disappointed.
Tattoo kit Power Supply ReviewTheir flash DVD was also disappointing. Not only was any of it true flash with outline sheets, and colour sheets, but they are also all pretty bad quality. Some of the images are very grainy only to be worsened with printing, and others just weren’t worth the time to look at. Personally I know I wont be using very many of the sheets on here. The organization was pretty bad either.
I actually really really love these ink cups. I know they are cheap cups that come with a kit, but the size is perfect. I have three different ink cups here at the studio: these clear ones, some white ones, and blue ones with feet. I find the blue ones, and the white ones are too small to get the nice grey washes I make in my ink cups. I prefer these which are slightly bigger. I like the footed ones for my colours, and the white ones for my outlining cup. I like to try new products!
The grommets, o-rings, and elastics they give you are pretty standard. I find the elastics tend to break while putting them on the machine though, so be careful! I have yet to have trouble with either the o-rings or the grommets though. The practice skin was nice as it didn’t have any designs on it. You could use the spirit stencil sheet provided to place your own design on the skin, and start practicing!
Needles from Hildbrant come in this kit. Very good quality needles in my honest opinion. I love them, and have yet to have any problems with these needles. I checked each one with an eye loupe, and they are all impeccable! Great quality pre-sterilized needles. The disposable pre-sterilized inkwells are nice too if you don’t have disposable grips, and have a way of covering your tubes. However, you only get two disposable grips: RT3, and RT5. You do get a full set of stainless steel grips inkwells, and two stainless steel grips. Again, autoclave is required for these! The practice inks in this kit are really great for practice. A little thin for my tastes, but it goes into fruit, and pig skin like butter, and stays there. I wouldn’t recommend it on people, but as a practice ink so you don’t waste your good stuff it’s pretty good. This kit doesn’t come with gloves, so it loses points!
Tattoo Kit – Pigments ReviewAll in all it’s a really great kit if you are just starting out! Aside from the few flaws: bent contact screw, catalog crash course, no disposable grips, etc. The lack at least one pair of gloves is kind of a let down for me. This made me take off 0.5 of a point. Still for 50$ to get all this stuff you’re pretty golden! I’d recommend this kit as a nice practice tool, and just either upgrade your stuff, or replace when necessary.
I give this kit 3 out of 5 stars, and would recommend it to my apprentices.
So, I got this email in my box a few days ago -
Hello Charles,
If you have a minute (or 10) I would like to share my story;
No need to apologize at all. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I just finished your book this morning and its a great read. I can really relate because I started out in 1995 scratching in my garage for my punk/skater friends. I used a needle and thread and did it old school. I went into the Navy later that year and started collecting my tats. I met Sailor Joe up in Waukegan Ill (where my A school was). He took me under his wing and started teaching me the basics. I did that for about 6 months then was shipped overseas.
I still had the bug while in the navy but had little cash. In those days all I could find was Huck Spaulding books and kits. I remember the kits cost like $500 in those days and was way outside my E4 income. So I built my own machines out of rotary motors and used pens as tubes. I fell back to my scratching ways and did probably 300 or so tats this way. Got pretty good at the jailhouse style. I then got out of the navy and had govt jobs for many years. Went into Nursing and got my Bach degree. I never forgot my tattooing and never had problems with using needles on patients.
Due to an injury I can no longer do any nursing, so I went back to art school and started mulling over tattooing again. I have been an artist one way or another since I was a kid.
Here are some of my sketches: (WEBSITE LINK REMOVED)
I also met an old navy buddy on Facebook that I taught how to scratch back in the day. He went on to apprentice and is now running a very successful studio.
He has agreed to have me be his apprentice and we are going to do this online via Skype video chat so he can watch me and give me tips.
Why I bring this all up is I was really positively impacted by your book. In the past I had checked into apprenticing and felt the abrasive and aggressive attitude that is prevalent in the tattoo community (besides 5 figure prices to apprentice). From reading your book I see it is not only acceptable to do it the way I am doing it, but looking forward I see a time where video conferencing with a teacher will be just as accepted as being right there. Most tattooists came from scratching and very few if any admit it. Its refreshing to read that others have the same background.
Thank you for all of your positive advice and help presented in your book. I cant wait to dive into the site a bit more and see what I can dig up.
Sincerely,
(NAME REMOVED)
