How to Make a Jail Tattoo

Video Transcript

"Jail tattoos are tattoos that are done crudely and a lot of times can be referred to as homemade tattoos. Jail or homemade tattoos, most of the time are done by either hand poking or with a machine made by or out of parts of cassette player, things of that nature. And that's what makes what is known as a rotary tattoo machine. A rotary tattoo machine is a very crude method of tattooing sometimes, and sometimes can be a rather smooth. It just depends on the person who built the machine, and the person who is operating it. Normally when a person does a homemade tattoo they are using a homemade tattoo machine is because they don't have access to professional equipment. So they are going to more than likely make their own ink out of ashes and water, toothpaste mixtures, there's all kinds of ways to make pigments. Or they maybe even just use a pigment that they buy from an art store. Either of these could be harmful to your skin, could give you a very undesirable effect in your tattoo as well. An example of a homemade tattoo is here on Zoe's arm, and if you will see a lot of these lines are very light and you coming on down again in the handle here very light. The leathering here is crude, the lines in the handle are not the same size. See a thick line going right down the center here, and then kind of a broken up line here. This is all due to a rotary machine does operate the same way as a spring machine, which you will see later operates. A rotary machine never slows down, it goes the same speed all the time. So if the person applying the tattoo slows his hand down at any time during the process, it will just dig right in that spot over and over, and this is what you get when that happens. When you are using a rotary tattoo machine you have got to keep your hand moving in some direction at all times, or you are just going to dig a ditch in the person's skin. If this were done by the hand poke method it would be a needle, the point of the needle wrapped in thread, dipped in the same kind of ink mixture, and then just the person would just go along and hit the skin like this over and over. Very painful and leaves a very undesirable looking outline. Most times when a person gets a tattoo like this they end up having to come to a professional artist to get it redone or covered up, which a lot of times can be more expensive than if they would have had it done right the first time."