tattoos not healing good with rotary..?

[phil geck]

so i've been tattooing with rotary's now for about 2 years now. off and on.. just got my bishop a month ago.. every once and a while some tattoos would come back healed like shit... real bad. it seemed to always scab where the black and the color meet the most.. i dont know why. not all of my tattoos come out like this. just a few every once in a while. my tattoos with coils never have done that...
my questions are...
1.how far should the needle hang out of the tip of the tube?
i really dont feel like it is hanging out too far.. when it is barley out (in fear of going too deep) it feels like i'm going over the tattoo too much to make it solid....

2. does voltage matter? i know it does.. i run my bishop at 9.5, around there.... the machine gets hot...

ive been using curved 15 mags mostly.. 13s as well...

i dont know what to do. i dont want to go back to coils.. they have been alot of trouble lately. just not as smooth as the rotarys...
most of the tattoos on my profile are done with rotarys and have healed fine. just those few that really bother me.
any advise?

[peter clements]

I doubt it's the Bishop to blame I use one myself, if it was or if it was your technique, you'd be seeing the problem more often. You say it's just a few times? The answer may be very simple,some people,thankfully not many, are bad healers. No matter what you do,they scab up bad. I once had a guy who was having a lot of tribal and we had this issue,no matter what we tried he scabbed up bad. At the time he was living with a nurse and she fetched home some medical grade burn dressings, it worked, finally he was healing up normally.
There is one mystery here, you say you run your Bishop at 9.5 and it gets hot? I run mine between 10-12 and it doesn't even seem to get warm-get in touch with Franco.

[merky]

are you looking at your needles maybe your dinging them .

[phil geck]

yeah i check my needles with a gem eye loop. i tattooed my girlfriend who heals great. when i did her chest, she healed shitty.. i used a 15 mag.. when i did the touch up i used a 17 bugpin mag. both were curved... but the touch up healed much better.. like normal.. in 3 or 4 days.. but then some people heal bad with the bugpins.. so i dont know...
i love the bishop.. i doubt its that..

[elbo]

yeah i check my needles with a gem eye loop. i tattooed my girlfriend who heals great. when i did her chest, she healed shitty.. i used a 15 mag.. when i did the touch up i used a 17 bugpin mag. both were curved... but the touch up healed much better.. like normal.. in 3 or 4 days.. but then some people heal bad with the bugpins.. so i dont know...
i love the bishop.. i doubt its that..

How much do you hang youre needles when colouring/shading ?...i tend to hang shit loads of needle when shading but know guys who sort of ride the tip with a real shallow hang which sometimes if the tip has a tiny raised area or as in some plastic tips which have a small projection from the moulding process can rough the skin up whilst working...I hope ive explained what im trying to say? and im not trying to teach you how to suck eggs.

[phil geck]

lately i've been doing both. trying to find or prevent the problem.. sometimes i'll ride the tip and it feels like i'm overworking the area.. and when i have the needle out further it feels better and seems to go in smoother.. but then again sometimes the person would scab..
its good to hear that you hang the needle out tho. i'm gonna try to let it hang out and spend less time in the area, maybe im trying to hard to make it solid.... at this point i really dont know....

[Alie K]

Maybe it's the area of the body you are working on that isn't healing as you'd like? I find that rotaries are better for some areas than others. Very squishy areas like sides, near armpits, stomachs are great for using a rotary, whereas thin-skinned areas like ankles and sternums are really easy to overwork, as the machine hits hard, and I find I have to be much gentler. I also find at times that a larger configuration doesn't give me the same color saturation that using smaller groupings can. I take it you've been using larger configurations all along, though?

[phil geck]

yeah that might be it.. i've been using mostly curved 15's.. and it is hard to get everything solid. especially when it is close to a line.. the areas i've been having trouble with have been : chest and shoulder area, inner arm, a portrait on the ribs, and the outer arm as well.. so its a pretty wide range of area.... maybe if i stick to a smaller grouping it might be more effective in packing the color that such a big mag...
i got tattooed from Ron Earhart on my shoulder neck/chest area with a blitz rotary. he used a 7 mag. it healed in 2 days.. the fastest i've had a tattoo heal.. ever.. and that area is usually problematic for healing and blow outs.. (collar bone area)
maybe i should stick to using the bigger mags when only doing portraits and black and grey...
kinda interested in getting a dragon fly because of the give factor... i imagine it being a little bit gentile on the skin...?

[peter clements]

yeah that might be it.. i've been using mostly curved 15's.. and it is hard to get everything solid. especially when it is close to a line.. the areas i've been having trouble with have been : chest and shoulder area, inner arm, a portrait on the ribs, and the outer arm as well.. so its a pretty wide range of area.... maybe if i stick to a smaller grouping it might be more effective in packing the color that such a big mag...
i got tattooed from Ron Earhart on my shoulder neck/chest area with a blitz rotary. he used a 7 mag. it healed in 2 days.. the fastest i've had a tattoo heal.. ever.. and that area is usually problematic for healing and blow outs.. (collar bone area)
maybe i should stick to using the bigger mags when only doing portraits and black and grey...
kinda interested in getting a dragon fly because of the give factor... i imagine it being a little bit gentile on the skin...?

I think you've hit the nail on the head and found the issue. I personally wouldn't try beyond an 11 mag for solid fields of color,generally I go with 7 and some of my Rotaries can really pack it in fast and even. 7 seems to be the magic number go bigger and you have to slow down your hand speed,so nothing gained.
I took a look at your gallery-you're doing some damn nice work.

[phil geck]

thank you very much! yeah man i think i will try using 7 mags from now on... even a 9 feels good.. thats all i used when i was working with coil machines... 9's were my fav.. maybe just for the black n grey's i can use a bigger mags...
thank you guys for you help