Dan Dringenberg
A Conversation
Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do here?
How did you get your start in the tattoo industry?
Me and my little brother had a fascination with tattoos, and the first time we really encountered tattoos was noticing my Dad’s two tattoos, and we were fascinated. One of my older brother’s friends had his name tattooed on the web of his hand and we asked him how he did it, and he told us about using a needle and thread and ink. So me and my little brother used our bedroom closet as a little tattoo studio, my brother was in the first grade, two years younger than me, and I was in the third grade or whatever. He tattooed his name on his forearm, and he was like “your turn” and I said “ugh, Mom and Dad’s gonna kill you” and it’s been like that ever since. So my little brother was actually tattooed at the age of six.
There was a tattoo shop between my Mom’s house and my Grandma’s house, and we would drive past it all the time when I was a kid. I remember standing up on the seat and looking out at it, like wow. That’s the first place I worked. I got tattooed there – Fat George’s Tattoo Gallery. It was good, man.
Later on from there, I ended up working at Fat George’s, so my influences were from Scott Sterling to Paul Rogers, Percy Waters. Some of these people were doing phenomenal tattoos. Then there was Colonel Todd, and you had The Pike. The Pike was famous for tattooing.
A lot of good people came through there. Corey Miller, Mark Mahoney, Dick Warsocki, all kinds. There was some really good art that went through there – and there was some really bad art that went through there, too, but it was all part of the story. It was just all part of the smell, the sound, the magic.
When you walked in that shop, you knew you were in a tattoo shop. Everywhere you looked was flash. Everywhere. Not one open space. If there was an open space, a design was put in it. When you walk in, you smell the A&D, the green soap. You’d hear the constant buzzing of machines, and they had these nice roll top desks with sinks in ‘em, one on each side. Low ceiling fans, you’d walk in and it was just magic, you could tell. It was like home for me.
How did you actually start making tattoo machines?
I got into fabricating – I have been working with machinery my entire life. My Dad had his Dad’s tools and there was an old 1920 or ‘25 machine lathe that I made leather belts for and I just started teaching myself how to use it as a little kid. Welding, you know, my Dad was a heavy equipment mechanic. We had all the best tools. And, man there wasn’t nothing we couldn’t do. My Dad used to always say, if you see it, someone made it. If someone made it, you can do it.
I started making tattoo machines at Fat George’s by chance actually. His machines would break down, and he’d just put ‘em in a safe or a toolbox, and they would stay there, and he’d get another one.
One day I started looking through ‘em. I got one that was broken to start working, and then the next day he took me to his house. We stopped by Sears and bought a rollaway toolbox. He had me put together machines in his garage, and there were two other rollaways in there. He told me to roll it in there, I rolled it in there, he sets it up like a little card table. He goes: “We’re gonna take the machines from this one, and put them in here.” They were full of all the machines that didn’t work. So I went through all these machines, and after I repaired all them, cleaning tubes and stuff, I started looking at the tubes. I thought, these tubes, they’re not finished, if someone spent their time they could make a better tube. So I told George that, and he goes “Really? Show me.”
So I went home and I spent two days making a tip on and old lathe. Never did stainless steel before. It was a rude awakening – a lot of learning curves on that, but I came back with the tube that ran great – held more ink, lasted longer.
And man, it was like shooting myself in the foot. Once I started selling them, people would buy ‘em and use ‘em for ten, fifteen years. They would never wear out. It’s good, on the one aspect, but on the manufacturing aspect, it isn’t that good, because once you got your client base and they got enough tubes, they’ve got enough tubes for their entire career. It was like a necessary evil. I didn’t even have any tubes myself.
Was it just the time and the effort that you put in that made you really master machine building in the way that you have?
I studied tattoo machines the way I should have studied in school. I try to learn as much as I can and still keep the magic. The way it works is this: Tattoo artists are creatures of habit. People are on this rotary kick again. It seems like it never really goes away. Everybody’s saying coil machines are old technology. No, rotary is. Rotary was first. December 5th, 1892, Samuel L. O’Reilly took the tattoo machine patent. It was a rotary machine. It was proven, at the end of the 1800s - didn’t even last ten years – it was insufficient. It didn’t work right. It was faster than poking, but it wasn’t what it could be. And today, it still isn’t what it could be.
The more I learn about tattoo machines, it seems like the less I know. There’s so much more to learn. So I keep trying to push the envelope. That’s what this place is. It’s a learning facility. If I was by myself right now with the machines, without other people, I’d have no challenge, no feedback, no pushing. Same with tattooing - you get around people and you push the envelope, you feed, you learn and you keep challenging each other.
The team of people I have here have worked with me for many years, and we push each other. We’re good friends, and we work together. I try to create a family environment here, like we all eat together, we do things together. That’s the way it is. And in doing so, we get to know each other, and we bug each other. But this is my life, this is all I know, and it’s too late to turn around and do something else. We try to keep pushing the envelope so we can help other artists.
It’s like, one of the things I tell people when they come here: If you can’t appreciate what you’re doing, ‘cause you’re making a tool someone’s going to use to feed their family with, then you don’t need to be here, pretty much. Because that’s what we do. We build tools that people use to feed their families.
You’ve had some hard times along the way yourself. Do you feel like that gives you an appreciation for what other artists go through?
Yeah, there was a point in time when, I think my parents were just waiting for the phone call that I was dead, you know what I mean? I lived my whole first half of life trying to fucking die it seemed. Then when I fell into this, it was a little different.
I always tell people, I didn’t pick this career, it picked me. Two relationships later, that’s the only thing I still have that’s the same. I got a good daughter out of the first relationship. The second one I had sixteen wonderful years, I thought, but the business takes its toll. It wears them down.
It cost me two relationships, a relationship with my daughter, and this business is kind of like a drug for me. I’ll come in here and start working sometimes and I’ll forget to eat.
What do you think makes a good machine?
Can you tell us about how your machines are made?
That’s beyond amazing. Unbelievable, even. So how do you make your frames?
My frames are constructed in a three-part method. Like a prefab is what Paul Rogers would call ‘em. It is the best way to machine, or to build something, or to cast something. The definition of casting is a cheap way to mass produce a part. There are a lot of words in there I don’t like associated with my machines: Cheap and mass produced. Now, in the machining aspect, to machine something from a solid block, you lose about eighty percent of the material. What is left is highly stressed. Every time you cut metal, it stresses. You need to de-stress it – it makes the metal weak. That’s just the way it is.
Ideally in a machining process, when you’re machining machines, you want to keep as much metal as possible, just enough to, so, a three-part construction is the best way of doing a tattoo machine. Cost efficient, but no corners cut. However, it takes a couple of extra steps. Now, when we do our bottom plates, I think right now we’re in the middle of doing a run of four hundred and fifty. It will take us about two weeks. And that’s really putting work in, know what I mean, but there are no corners cut on them.
I could make them faster, however, eliminating a step, eliminating a bit of the passion. But to me, I do it this way because so far, it’s been pretty much the best way of doing it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes with different things. But each part of my machine is putting my own thought out – and I like when I get to a place where I’m stumped, because then it’s like the real engaging part of it kicks in: the sleepless nights, the writing notes, the studying, going back to the books – just trying to figure it out. So, it’s like, I’m constantly pushing the envelope, trying to, anyway.
And does it cost money? Sometimes yes, I come up with this idea – like, a guy who works for me came up with these coils and it gave birth to this one idea, and that idea went a little bit further. I took a little bit beyond scope to a point where the coils only lasted about six months before they were like springs – but I wouldn’t have known that until I got enough of them out and got the feedback, seeing that six months later.
However, for six months, I think I put five hundred machines out like that. And every one of my machines are guaranteed. I tell ‘em to send ‘em back, I’ll send you another one or I’ll change the coils out.
There’s been times when I’ve been at a convention, I see a machine, I know what’s wrong with it, I grab it and tell the guy take your pick. That’s what I do. But I needed the information because it gave birth to the next ones. I came up with the correct formula, now my coils have an inertia. What I did was, by creating this so that it comes down to the top of the coil – even at a lower speed or a lower power setting, it’s hitting with the same depth, the same follow-through. So it’s like, I made a mistake, owned it, and continued forward.