From: pdavies@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Paul Davies)
Subject: tattoo faq 2/2
Organization: University of Toronto Chemistry Department
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 00:16:17 GMT

*** TAT FAQ PART 2 OF 2 ***
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Q) How do I look after my new tattoo?
A) The artist that did your tattoo will have something very definite to
say about the care of your new tattoo, and it is probably a good idea to
listen to him/her.  But, after saying that, here is some advice (not
always consistent because everyone has a different experience just as you
will). Opinions that differ are set off by square braces: [].

1) Get tattooed no less than five hours before bedtime. The first cleaning is
   important.

2) After the tattoo is completed, it should have some kind of ointment put on 
   it, sometimes vitamin E is used, sometimes a Polysporin/Vit.E combination.
   In any case, it will come out with a bandadge.

3) After 5 - 6 hours, you are set for the first wash. Clean your hands. Then
   again. Normally I use only organic soaps in my house, but when handling my
   tattoos I break down and use a good disinfecting soap -- just in case.
   [You do not need to wait this long... You can do this as soon as you
   get home.  In fact, I recommend it, since you still have endorphins to
   deal with the pain of the first shower.]

4) Peel off the bandages, gently. Now wash off the ink/blood/ointment. I tend
   to fill the sink up with warm water and rest the foot in it. I then rinse
   by filling my cupped hands with water and stroking the gunk off the tattoo.
   [Wet them first; shower is the best place. If you soak the bandage, you
    decrease the chance of pulling scabs off.]

   I have heard that running water from the tap, or especially the shower is
   not good and will damage the image.
   [Nah, no problem, as long as it's a gentle stream. ]
   [Do not use HOT water. use warm. Hot is bad for a new tattoo.]
   

5) Soap up your hands good and then rub down the tattoo to get it good and 
   soapy. Then wash off with soap until there is no slipperiness left at all.

6) Pat dry the tattoo.

7) Some people suggest leaving the tattoo for 15 minutes after washings to 
   allow the healing process to begin.  I have not found this to make a 
   difference.

8) Wet a kleenex with rubbing alcohol. I use isopropyl at 70%. Pat the tattoo 
   until it stings. There are people on the net who say that this causes you to
   hurt the body and inhibit healing, but I'm not a big fan of infection.
   [This is silly, and though I'm not sure it is BAD, it's certainly not
   needed. It drys the skin and is not all that efficient a disinfectant;
   if you have used a disinfectant soap, and use an antibiotic ointment,
   you're wasting the effort, and it will HURT.]

9) Put a THIN layer of polysporin over the tattoo. The image should be visible;
   that's how thin I mean.
   [Massage it in well. It's ok to rub gently. You want to get it
   into the skin.]
   

10) Put a thick shloop of Vitamin E cream over that. Get a vitamin E with a 
    rating on it. I use a 10,000 IU product, but I do not think that the actual
    rating is important, just that the company really is putting some in it.
    There are a number of vitamin "E" salves (note the quotes they use) with
    little or no vitamin E in it. I found out the hard way that this matters.
    [Again, this is not neccesary, and, in fact, does not do much good.
     Polysporin will prvent absorption of anything that's put over it.]

Now we bandage. I use kleenex and sticky (scotch) tape. It's cheap and works. I
have heard that gauze sticks -- why ask for trouble. I find sticky tape pulls
the skin and hair (no lacking for either :-) less than masking or medicinal
"white tape."

[The only reason I can come up with to bandage it (once you have Neosporin-ed
it) is keep from getting ink on the sheets.]
[I don't bother. You can do this or not, as you like. I would
recommend a 'non-stick' pad, however; you do NOT want the tattoo sticking;
when you pull a bandage away from a fresh tattoo, ink can come with it.

No one I know keeps a tattoo bandaged after the first night.  It's really
unnecessary; it's a lot of headache and does not really do you much good.
I have heard that is slows the healing process, though I don't know if
this is true.

I've only ever heard of two tattoos that got infected. Of 1000's that I've
seen or heard of. As long as you wash and keep them well ointmented for
the first few days, infection is not a concern. What is a concern is
keeping the tattoo moist for the healing period (about two weeks).]

11) Take a single sheet of kleenex and press FIRMLY into the shloop of vitamin
    E cream.  What we are doing is 'melting' or 'fusing' the kleenex into the 
    vit.E and onto the wound. This will act as a scab, and is what we are  
    trying to do, fake a scab. The theory is "no scab -- no scab troubles"

12) Cover the wound with another 1 or 2 kleenexes -- "firm but not tight." If 
    you are too tight you'll swell. If you are too loose then the 'scab' will 
    not fool your body.

13) I repeat this four times a day. Since I live on little sleep, that gives me
    a cleaning at 5:00am, 11:00 am, 5:00pm, 11:00pm. It is very important to 
    clean off all remnants of the last cleaning -- blood, ink, cream. To care
    for the tattoo I have a "tattoo kit" consisting of soap, towel, scissors,
    box of kleenex, tape, Polysporin, vitamin E and rubbing alcohol. 

    [Whoah... I tend to disagree here.  After the first cleaning, switch
    to moisturizer (I like Lubriderm).  Starting the next morning gently
    moisturize the tattoo.  Keep it moisturized until your skin is no
    longer dry (several weeks past scab)...  ]

14) Try to keep the area raised. I now keep a box under my desk to keep
    the leg elevated; if it is down, you will get swelling.

landmarks:
-After the second dressing change (for me the morning after) I have no ink 
 bleeding out.
 [After the first evening, I have no ink bleeding out.]
 
-After the second or third dressing, I have no blood. This varies of course 
 based on how much the area has been worked and the specific location.

-After day three or so, the redness will have gone away. When the red goes 
 away, switch to vitamin E cream by itself. 

-When the tattoo stops stinging at the rubbing alcohol, it is healed. Stop 
 bandaging it. In fact if you bandage for too long, the tape can cause a little
 bit of psoriasis/scaling, so try to change where you put the tape.

-After the regular cleaning/bandaging is done with (and you no longer feel
 chained to a sink.... :-)  keep a thin layer of "something" on the tattoo.
 I have used cheap vitamin E, the "real" vitamin E, stuff called "fulgar" which
 is essentially petroleum jelly with an anti-bacterial agent. I actually like
 the "fulgar" the best and if i could find some to buy ('twas a gift) I would
 use it.

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Q) How does weight gain/loss affect a tattoo?
A) Tattoos can definitely be affected by stretch marks.  Whether you will
or won't get stretch marks is apparently something else that is
genetically determined (this is what I was told by the MD during
pregnancy).

Anyhow, I know for a fact that stretch marks can ruin a tattoo, because I
have a very small tattoo which now looks more like a blob than ever
before, due to a large stretch mark running through the middle of it.
Luckily, this was a home-brewed job (the kind done with India ink and a
pin wrapped in thread) so I was never particularly attached to the
artwork.  :-}

If your skin stretches due to weight gain and then shrinks back up without
losing its elasticity (the loss of elasticity is what results in stretch
marks), then I would expect that there wouldn't be much distortion of the
tattoo, maybe none at all.

Or, put the tattoo someplace that won't get stretched so much, like the
chest area above the breasts.  My upper stomach didn't stretch much,
either, but the lower abdominal skin did stretch quite a lot.

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Q) Can a tatoo be removed?
A) There aren't many choices for dealing with a bad tattoo.


1.  get it removed.
	there seems to be two approaches. one uses ruby lasers and the
other uses two chemicals injected into the skin.  both leave scars -- and
the chemical, if not done correctly, can eat away at you until the sinews
show.  the scar tissue can be either good or bad to rework. the laser is
REALLY expensive.

	As you said, this is expensive and leaves scars, AND it hurts.


2. get it re-worked
	this is the harder, what the frank [blue dragon tattoos] is suggesting
	is that we fill in the whole thing to get a nice black lump and then
	do a celtic over it in bright red.  the black will leak through (the
	reason why black is miserable to cover) but this should result in
	a dark, dark red colour.

	You really won't get much red, but you CAN do that. However,
	what I would me more inclined to do is to find someone who's
	REALLY good at coverup. 

	This means not just a good tattooist, but a really good
	artist; what they'll have to do is find a way to work the
	existing tattoo into a new design that will cover and disguise
	what's there. 

	I have seen some brilliant coverup; there's a lot of it in
	one or two issues of 'Tattootime'. 

	
	The people at Tattoo City here in SF can do it; however, 
	I don't know where you're located, so I can't help with
	a reccomendation...


I was just reading that there is some success with going over the area with 
a tattoo needle again, then soaking out the color with an epsom salts 
solution.  Apparently, it needs several applications, and only a few people 
are doing it, but there has been some success with it.  I also understand
it's a bitch because it's just like getting tattooed all over again---in 
reverse.  

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Q) What is branding and how do you do it?
A) Branding (as if you didn't know) is the process where you take
something white hot (usually some piece of metal in some particular shape)
and press it into your flesh so that it makes a serious burn and (later) a
permanent scar.  Branding is dangerous (all burns are prone to infection)
but so is driving a car.

Most of the branding I've read about fell into one of two categories -
rite of passage, and punishment.

Most of the rites of passage involved branding someone with a design on
entry into puberty.  A lot of tribal people have puberty initiation that
involve something like scarification/tattooing.

Most of the branding in Western cultures was done as a means of marking
criminals.  The French would brand a fleur de lis into the shoulder of the
offender, and the mark was supposed to make the wearer into one of
essentially an "untouchable" class.  However, they also did this to
Protestants, after a while, and with so many French Huguenots wearing fleur
de lis brands, it lost a lot of its former meaning.

The English branded people with different marks, in different locations,
depending on what they were accused of.  Cutpurses and pickpockets were
accorded the punishment of an "S" brand on the cheek indicating "slave"
and sent into a lifetime of indentured servitude.  (This punishment came
into the laws in the reign of Henry VIII, and was abolished in the 18th
century, when they started getting heavily into transporting folks to the
colonies.)

Based on my experience with burning my fingerprints off on an antique
stove, and the fact that the pain lasted for weeks, you might not want to
get into that.  (Well, if you're into constant pain and self-generated
endorphins, I don't know.) In full-scale branding, the iron is heated hot
enough, and applied long enough, that the resulting wound is a
third-degree burn, which destroys the nerve endings and doesn't hurt as
much as more minor burns.  However, areas that have been third-degree
burned *never* regain sensitivity.  It will make a silver scarred area, in
the shape of the third-degree burn, due to destruction of the entire
dermis layer of the skin (through to the underlying tissue).  (This last
gleaned from Red Cross work and seeing old third-degree burns--a former
boyfriend had a row of circular scars from when his stepfather used to
burn him with cigarettes, when he was a kid.) The surrounding skin, with
years, will eventually fill in areas that haven't been too badly damaged.
  
A word of warning---second and third degree burns are notorious for
getting majorly infected.  Third degree is slightly better, due to
cauterization.  Where it gets you is if the scab cracks.

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Q) What is scarring?
A) Scarring is the making of marks on the body through the use of making
cuts.  The most famous use of such techniques can be seen in Africa.
Small cuts are made in the skin and ash is rubbed into the cuts to make a
raised bump scar.  This can look really great.  The unfortunate thing is
that people with white skin can't really get these types of scars because
they are formed by a substance called keloid.  Races with dark skin have
keliod and races with light skin do not.

some experiences:


Most of us who do (or did) tend to try to figure it out later.  I knew 
someone in Jr. High who had some awesome peace signs and ankhs and stuff 
cut into her arms with razor blades.  Really arty stuff for a 13-year-old
to be doing---but she had a *lot* of messy problems.  (This girl was my 
best friend in earlier life, until the day she flipped out and tried to kill
me, so I knew how messy...)

When I was doing it in high school and college, it wasn't a decorator item.
It was either because I wanted blood for writing vows I was taking (like 
swearing off sex for eternity---don't worry, I got better ;-) ) or because
it was a test, symbolic suicide.  If I had the guts to cut through the top 
layer of hide, I probably did have the guts to kill myself, if need arose.  
A way of proving I could do it, without having to commit myself.

I know one lady who also did it for that last reason.  A male friend of mine
tended to combine the first reason with the pain-sacrifice thing.  He was 
also making vows swearing himself to celebacy, etc. because of some very bad 
experiences with women, and he cut this checkerboard into his ankle, then 
wrote the vows with the blood and burned the paper---sort of a ritual thing.
He said the pattern was a way of "locking in" the sacrifice---very ritual.

Another friend was in the brig in the Navy.  He is a dissociated personality, 
and has a "dark side" with another name---this guy took over and wiped up a 
bar with a couple guys.  Well, the other personality carved his initials into
my friend's arm, on the inside of the left arm, to "show him who was really 
in control of the body."  He had the scar-initials for years, but the faded 
after 10 years or so.

I gave up the practice in my second year of college.  Just didn't feel the 
need to draw blood any more.  I still get urges, now and then, when my stress
tops out, but I don't precisely know why.  I just don't follow up.  It's 
really strange thought, because I remember it being nearly painless.  I recall
shocking some folks in college when I asked why we had to draw blood from 
fingertips for samples, when that hurt, and slicing your wrist didn't hurt 
at all, and you got so much more blood...  Hmm, my head has been some very 
interesting places, over the years...


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END OF REC.ARTS.BODYART TATTOO/MISC FAQ.