Smith Journal — January 2018

077 SMITH JOURNAL

Tell us about yourself. I run a tattoo supply
store in Geelong North, Victoria, selling inks,
flash art sets and tattoo machines. I started
by making my own machines in the late
1980s. Back then there were only about 400
tattooists in the country, so I’d pull the pages
out of the phone book and travel from shop
to shop, showing them what I was making.
Nowadays there’s probably 10,000 tattooists
in Australia. I can’t make enough machines
to keep up with demand, so I mainly import
them now. But I still hand-make machines for
myself when I have the time.

How’d you get into this line of work?
I became a toolmaker’s apprentice when
I was 19. One day during our lunch break a
friend asked me to watch him get tattooed,
so I went along. When the tattooist heard I
was a metalworker, he asked if I could make
machine parts for him. I thought, “why not?”
and gave it a shot whenever I had some free
time with the lathe. My parts were pretty
good compared to what else was on the market
back then. He wasn’t too keen to pay me,
though – he’d tattoo me for my work instead.

Was it common for teenagers to make
tattoo equipment? You just couldn’t buy
the equipment you needed to be a tattooist

in Australia in the 1980s, so you had to

make your own gear. Most tattooists would

solder up bits of syringes or take springs from

grandfather clocks. That was the ingenuity you

needed back then, and the industry tended

to attract people with mechanical skills, like

typesetters, taxidermists and jewellers. I didn’t

have much artistic skill as a tattooist, but I had

mechanical skill, so I found my niche.

How’d you develop your style? Once I had

the basic geometry of the machines down

I started playing around with different

shapes and styles. Suddenly tattooists were

asking me to make side plates that looked

like dope leaves or dollar signs. Before long I

was making machines in all sorts of shapes,

carving them with files and band saws.

What’s your most unique design?

My mokume-gane, or ‘wood grain’ machines.

It’s a Japanese technique originally used to

make samurai sword handles. You fold layers

of brass, copper and silver in on themselves

hundreds of times, then cover it in acid. The

acid eats away at the copper very quickly, the

brass at a medium rate and doesn’t affect the

silver at all, creating a wood-like effect. It’s

just beautiful to look at. It was hard to work

out how to deal with mokume-gane because

there’s just not that many people still using it.

The old skills are disappearing, so I often end

up buying old books from the 1920s and ’30s

to teach myself.

Has the field changed much over the years?

I’m making more money now, but I honestly

liked the tattoo industry better when it was

smaller. I felt like I was part of a secret society.

Of course, I was at the mercy of the bikie clubs

back then – they controlled who I could sell

to. Times have changed, though there are still

shops getting burnt down to this day.

What do you do when you’re not working?

I spend a lot of time tracking down old

tattoo art and equipment. Back in the 19th

century, tattoo artists had to come up with

all sorts of creative ways to make equipment

using this newfangled electricity everyone

was experimenting with. They’d take dental

hammers and put needles on them. The

grandfather of the modern tattoo machine

was Thomas Edison’s electric pen, which was

patented in 1876. My collection started as

a hobby, but now it’s so huge I need to get a

building to house it all in. I plan to open a

museum in 2018, to show the new generation

how interesting the industry was, to preserve

a bit of that magic. •