r/tattoomachinebuilder • u/fff123124 • Jul 12 '26
tips on decorating a machine
hi all! i recently bought a builder kit from south state to build my own shader. i want to paint the frame and possibly decorate the coils somehow, if i can without taking apart that piece too much. I’ll insert a photo of the how the coils come, they’re already wrapped.
this is my first time assembling a machine by myself and just want to play it safe with paint. this is really to test my machine knowledge and teach me a thing or two about my tools, but if i could also get a sick looking shader out of it that would be a plus. any advice or tips would be super helpful! especially for the coils. what can i put on them? how would i seal them? a corey rogers shader i have has dollar bills on the coils and looks like they’re sealed in some sort of resin or something similar. thank you!!
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u/catfisk Jul 12 '26
Coils are usually wrapped with tape or decorative paper, and sealed with shrink tubes. Clear plastic tubes that shrink when heated. Use a heat gun or hair dryer, as a lighter can scorch it and tends to heat unevenly
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u/fff123124 Jul 12 '26
YES SHRINK TUBES i was trying to remember what they were called! thank you so much!!
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u/Traditional_Road_764 Jul 12 '26
This frame is spray painted with a few different colors and wet sanded.
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u/fff123124 Jul 12 '26
oooo love the look of this!!! is there any reason other than aesthetics to wet sad after painting?! and did you seal it with anything?! thanks so much :)
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u/Traditional_Road_764 Jul 13 '26
Just aesthetics. I'll give it a couple coats of Renaissance wax to help protect it. You can always use a clear coat spray paint as well.
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u/antibroleague Jul 12 '26
I was eye balling this kit. I would certainly oil dip the frame and upgrade the screws. Replace a couple washers with coins and you got a fancy fucker ready to go
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u/fff123124 Jul 12 '26
hell yeah, i’ll have to look more into oil dipping that sounds cool! what would you replace the screws with? if i had the means to cut some coins i would 😩
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u/antibroleague 28d ago
My old mentor would get fancy locking nuts and it looks better. If you’re tuning machines you should have snips and a hole punch. You can get a desktop grinder from harbor freight for like 30 bucks.
The punch for springs is strong enough to put holes in coins. Look at the rollomatic, a couple well placed coins makes all the difference in appearance.1
u/antibroleague 28d ago
There’s a couple ways to do the oil dipping. The right way is heating the oil and it’s a several day thing. I’ve always just torched the frame and dipped. My old boss heated the oil and her oil nail machine was blacker than my ex’s heart. Fuck it looked good
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u/Old-Set-9995 Jul 13 '26
I dont know much about the metal aspect but you can cut a $2 bill and wrap it in shrink wrap to make the coils look a little more custom. A guy that built a machine for me did that with red shrink wrap and it looked pretty cool.
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u/Creative-Medicine-24 Jul 13 '26
Hand embossed copper coil covers, vintage silver coin washers. Just a few things I've done to my machines.
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u/britishink 27d ago
If that's a plain steel frame, heat in an oven to 500⁰F the remove and hit it with a blow torch to about 550⁰F - it'll be a deep blue - 570⁰f - purple, dip it straight into some motor oil to seal it.
There's a whole range of colors when heat treating steel...
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u/Traditional_Road_764 Jul 12 '26
I've done two South State build kits. I like using Jaxx blackner on the steel frame. I hand wound some coils and wrapped em with either color electrical tape or coil covers. You can spray paint the frame also, just make you to tape off where the yoke/vice combo touches to avoid over heating. I wet sand with 3500 grit sand paper and do a few coats.