AB 300 MA. Relax and take a deep breath.

We have talked to many of the tattoo studio throughout California and we thought it would be nice to mention things that have been brought up in the past weeks.

Yes, we train for Blood borne pathogens, First Aid, and CPR/AED.  Our training center is certified through ASHI (American Safety and Health Institute.  We meet the CFR 29 1910.1030 OSHA requirements for BBP training.  There is a difference from county to county as far as the CPR/AED, First Aid requirements.

CPR / AED 4.5 hours $60.00
Basic First Aid 2.5 hours $40.00
Blood Borne Pathogens 2 hours $50.00
Full package of all the above is a two day course that is 10 hours
CPR/AED, Basic First Aid, BBP 10 hours $120.00

There are differences from county to county regarding studio requirements as well.  Counties can differ on the requirements for sinks, walls, ceilings and floors.  We highly recommend that you become friends with your county inspector.  Ask questions, ask question, ask questions!

Things you must have: Infection Control Prevention Plan (Exposure Control Infection Prevention Plan) the name differs county to county, MSDS binder, training modules (engineering control), job categories, job tasks, and HIPAA management.  Autoclave requirements concerning spore testing and autoclave certification schedules.  There are some great options out there for your autoclave schedule.  You will need to run a class V indicator in your autoclave along with an indicator in each bag unless you have a peel pack with an indicator on  the bag (most bag do).  If you are using the tube style of bags you will have to put in an indicator strip in each bag. You are required to spore test monthly at a minimum. There are other requirements that are added depending on the county.  Some counties require  you to run a thermometer in the autoclave that records the temperature or have a printer on the autoclave that records the temperature and cycle time.  You can resolve all of this by running a spore test every time.  There are spore testing companies that can help you with that.  You will need a bathroom sink, clean room dirty sink (some counties want a clean room clean sink as well), and a common sink for the artists to wash their hands ( some counties want a sink a every procedure area), all sinks must have foot pedals, or knee pedals, or motion sensor faucet.  Must have hot and cold water! Must have motion sensor hand sanitizer and motion sensor soap dispensers at every sink.  Touchless hand towel dispensers as well.  Many counties are requiring motion sensor hand sanitizer dispensers in every procedure area as well.

A long list at best.  I think my best advice would be that you really need to find out what your county is asking for and meet that by 1 July 2012.  Many will have to end up moving and some will have to close.  AB 300 MA is going to separate those that want to be in the industry and those that do not.  For better or for worse this will make this industry come out of the dark ages.  The tattoo industry is full on mainstream now and I do not think, IMHO, there is any turning back.

Lastly, we do not travel away from our studio or training center to do training.  It would be very expensive to say the least for us to travel and do the training outside Stanislaus County.  We can, but it would cost you more than what you could find locally.  You can go to the hsi.com and find a training center in your area.  The American Safety and Health Institute is OSHA compliant and meets or exceeds all requirements for the training you will need.  You can find HIPAA training online for around $25.oo and you can find much of the training for that for free on the states health department website.  We can help you write your Infection Control Prevention Plan for $300.00.  You might be able to find someone in your area to help you write it.  Again, we would have to go to your site in order to help you write it, so having me travel a long distance will not be cost effective if you can do locally.

Good Luck!

C/S
by Scott “Scotchie” Chapman

AB300MA Tattoo, Body Art and Piecing Regulation Is Now State Mandated

AB 300 (Ma) This bill places a state Mandate for all counties to regulate the Body Art, Body Modification, Tattoo, Piercing industry.  There is a state mandated minimum that must be met by July 1, 2012.  It was passed in October of 2011 and became active January 1, 2012.  This will force all counties to come into compliance.  The industry will have come into compliance by July 1, 2012 or face misdemeanor fines up to $1,000.  Permits will have to be purchased and businesses inspected and brought up to compliance.  This is what the body art industry in Stanislaus County has been trying to put into place for many years.

As a studio owner and artists this makes us very happy.  This is a necessary measure to protect the general public from untrained people working from their kitchens, or studios that are not in compliance with health and safety codes in place.  Tattoo artists, piercers and studios will have to meet the minimum health and safety codes to stay in business.  Sterilization procedures, hazardous waste management, blood born pathogen training, first aid, CPR, and AED training at the minimum.

I imagine that the studios will have to pay a permit fee like the bay area, but that would be a welcomed cost in order to level the playing field in the industry.  We do not mind competition as long as it is a reputable artist or studio that we are competing against.  With 34 studios and counting listed in the phone book or internet, and countless on Craigslist it is a nightmare trying to deal with the overhead of a studio that follows honest business guidelines while competing against people that follow no guidelines at all.

We and others have been endeavoring to get these thing put into place.  In the journey to doing this we have made sure that we were ready.  We are the only certified instructors registered with Stanislaus County.  We have been training tattoo studios and artists in CPR, First Aid, AED, and Blood Born Pathogens since 2008.  Scotchie has his instructors certification from the American Red Cross, and The Blood Born Pathogen Training Institute of America.

Stay tuned for the results of the new law and how it plays out in Stanislaus County.

C/S  Scotchie Chapman

www.dclt2.com

1404 Crows Landing Rd.
Modesto, Ca. 95351
209-571-8282

Tattoo snobs…

This gallery contains 5 photos.

Since when did we as a tattoo community give a damn what mainstream society thought of us?  I am seeing or rather reading about people and their ugly tattoos.  While some of the tattoos are well done, the subject matter … Continue reading →

Oh really I am in who’s who? You want me to buy what?

So I get this letter to be in a Who’s who publication.  So silly me I submit the information they are asking for in the email.  Later on I get this phone call to interview me about the whole who’s who thing.  They want me to buy my way into their publication!  Whoa!  I thought you contacted me for a reason, not to sell me a false way to feel better about myself.  I think this is such a sham.  If I have to pay to be in this who’s who thing then I guess I am not much of a who’s who.  I politely told them no I was not interested.  Oh wow you have thought I had kicked a baby.  So funny that they would expect me to want to pay for my spot in the publication.  “Sorry, Ma’am, I will make my reputation here locally thank you.”

Nowadays, we get a ton of different people calling trying to get our money.  From internet companies that want to charge us $3 a click for advertising locally.  I have never had to pay more than $1 a click on the most popular site in tattooing!  $3 a click… Wow, are you out of touch.  And when I went to the site to check it out; they had businesses that had been out of business for the last four years!  Now who is out of touch?  It amazes me how all these people want an outrageous amount of money for doing nothing than just listing you.  Just like all the other people who do it for free, but because they charge you more that means that it is better, even if you do not get anything better.

The phone book salesmen are out of touch as well.  Wanting as much as $800 a month!  Sorry, but people do not use the phone book as much anymore.  We ask people all the time how they found us and most are telling us, word of mouth, or the internet.  The internet sites that mentioned the most are the ones we get to use for free!  Now you want me to use an out of date form of advertising that you raised the price of an ad?  I get less business exposure for more money?  Again, sorry but no thank you.

When am I going tell people I am going to charge more for their work because the economy is bad?  Never. That doesn’t make any sense.  When the economy is bad you cut your price, I mean right?  Maybe I missed out on the concept of making more money.  I don’t know because we are staying busy.  Great art for a great price.  Give people more for what little amount of money they do have.  Weird concept I know.

To all of our clients out there…Thank you for coming to us we appreciate it!  To those that are not our clients…Come in and see us and you will be one of our returning clients.

With respect,

C/S

Scott  “Scotchie” Chapman

IT is about time.

I was wondering how long it would take before people stood up to the fat cats in D.C. and Wall Street.  Things are so corrupt and out of control I am surprised that it took this long for people to stand up and say enough is enough.  You  noticed that the media does not want to do much coverage of it though.  Here is history in the making folks.  This is not over.  This is not going to go away, I hope.  I really hope that people are starting to see how bad our government has gotten.

I know I am tired of supporting rich people while they get rich and everyone else stays poor.  The middle class has been the step-child for far too long.  While we may have a heart and care for those less fortunate, we also have a temper and we are fed up with the lazy ass rich people.  They hove no conscious or compassion or empathy for their fellow man.  The proof is in the pudding.  Whom did the bailouts go to and what did they do with them?  The bailouts went to the rich bankers and they put it in their pockets and walked away from the American public that is going to have to foot the bill.

It is time for all the crooked people in Washington to go.  We the people need to take our country back from the rich few that buy their leaders not ours.  The leaders we have are crooks.  They are only leaders in ripping off the American public they were supposed to serve.  This is not a surprise because it has been happening for a while.  We have lost so much that I do not think we will ever get it back.  We work for next to nothing and have no health care or any job security.  The blue collar worker has all but disappeared.  The rich people have been allowed to take their industry to another country and still sell their product here.  Buy American is a thing of the past because we do not make anything anymore.  The rich of this country have turned against this country.  Our leaders have sold us all out.

When will we all decide to say enough is enough and actually follow through and make this protest count?  Will we all stay home and bring things in this country to a halt?  We should bring the whole damn thing to a complete stop.  Keep the kids home, keep ourselves home, and not buy a damn thing from any corporation.  We should show them that they do depend upon us and we are tired of being treated like slaves or animals.

I can only hope that some will read this and take heart.  Civil disobedience is our duty to save this country.  We need to do that duty with some damn pride and finally grow some balls and stand up to the elite rich.  Support those that are occupying Wall Street, Sacramento, and the world!  What would happen if we all stayed home one day? Ten days?  How long would it take for them to listen to us all for once.  The fleecing of America is finished because there is nothing left to fleece!

To the wealthy and the Washington D.C. fat cats… Kiss my Ass.

Capacitors and your tattoo machine.

We should know we have a “cap” or capacitor on our machine.  You should know why it is on your machine.   A cap can make your machine run hot, burn a hole through your spring, and make it run like crap.  Wes Wood at Unimax tattoo supply came up with a kit that lets you try different caps without having to solder anything.  I would recommend this kit to everyone.  Yes, you can make your own and you can get your caps somewhere else, but hey Wes has made this such plug and play kit that it would be great to help you get started to tuning your machines.

Your machine should not be getting so hot that you have to put it down.  This can be a sign that you are forcing the machine to work outside of what it was tuned and built to do.  If you want your machine to hit harder than change your springs and possibly your cap.  If you are cranking up the voltage to get your machine to hit harder then maybe you need to tune your machine.  If you run your machine like a chainsaw and that is your style of tattooing than I would hope you are using a cutback that is set up for running fast.  You better have a quick hand or you are going to chew up your client.  Ask other artists if their machines get really hot and make sure that they tattoo the way you do, so the information will match up.  You will find out that the machine does not have to get hot even after many hours of use.

Capacitors store energy and if the cap is not in range or is bad than the machine will get hot.  If you want the machine to run fast, but you have a large cap on it that helps it run slower than you have set your machine up to fail.  What the frame is made out of will also dictate how long you can run a machine before it loses performance.  I would refer you to Danny Fowler for that explanation.  You should be able to run a machine for hours without it becoming an iron, or the machine stumbling all over itself.

First stop for you is to start with researching what a capacitor change can mean for you.

C/S

Scotchie Chapman
DCL Tattoo
1404 Crows Landing Road
Modesto, Ca. 95351
209-571-8282

Artists and shop bouncing…. It happens… get over it…

Well this happens more than what people realize.  As an artist first and a studio owner second…I am guilty of doing the same thing.  Artists are free agents, free spirits, and generally somewhat flaky.  We do not take shit from people so when we feel like someone is giving us shit we tend to bounce.  If we get bored we tend to bounce, if we do not feel like we are growing artistically we tend to bounce.  So hopping from one shop to another is something that is normal.  As artists we love to travel and tattoo at conventions and do guest spots.  This helps with the wonder lust that we all seem to have in our souls.

As an owner of a studio that is also an artist I do not get insulted when an artist leaves to go to another studio.  I would hope that they would be mature enough to realize that is part of the industry.  The studio was here before you came to work at it and it will remain long after you leave to go else where.  I have had some artists work for us three or four times and we still remain friends to this day and they will come and work for us again when and if I have an opening.  I have had many people come and guest spot for us. We usually part on good terms.  For those that leave cause they get their panties in a knot, I do not take it personally.  I do not get bent out of shape.  Even the artists that I have asked to leave can come back if the things that caused the parting have changed .

There is a small community of legitimate artists in the industry and most of us know of each other or have heard of each other in our city, or state, or even world-wide. So to harbor hard feelings toward each other is really a stupid thing to do.  All that does is make your exposure of art contacts smaller.  It is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  It seems like the younger crowd has not learned this yet and it is because they are immature.  They will hopefully grow up and realize that the world kept turning and people did not disappear.  It becomes and issue of over inflated ego on their part and the only person that gets hurt by that is themselves.

So I guess all of us need to just take a deep breath and get on with our own business.  I guess if you are a studio owner that is not an artist then you may have some difficulty with artists bouncing all the time, but you should have realized early on that it is all part of the tattoo industry.

I do know of several studios that have had the same staff for decades.  On the flip side I think I have seen many more that change regularly.  I know many people who have one or two artists and the rest are guest spotters.  It all comes down to what works for you.

C/S

DCL Tattoo
1404 Crows Landing Road
Modesto, Ca. 95351
209-5718282

http://dclt2.com

Great video for you to see about the tattoo industry.

I hope this link works.  Enjoy!  It is a very good documentary.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=151070628313367

C/S

“Scotchie”

DCL Tattoo
1404 Crows Landing Rd
Modesto, Ca. 95351
209-571-8282
dclt2.com

We Have a Bleeder! Clean-up isle 6…What do you do?

 

So a lesson learned today by Jeff.

“Hey, Scotchie come here and look at this…” This is usually does not mean hey come look at this sick tattoo, or this new machine I just got, but this does not look right… My reaction, “yup…That sucks…Let me take a closer look.”

Now most of us would go through our check list of things that could and can go wrong… Needles are not bent, or snagged, machine is running good, needle not set to deep, machine is hitting right, skin is stretched tight, hand movement is right, ink is packing in well…Soooo, why is this person bleeding so much? Again, many of us go down that check list… Did you drink last night, or today, did you take any Asprin, Tylenol, Vicodin, are you anemic, do you have hepatitis, are you a hemophiliac, etc…

So the next question would be do you continue to tattoo them knowing that the tattoo is not going to heal up correctly. If it is line work my answer would be to finish the line work, but not the shading or color work. I would ask them to reschedule their appointment and I would ask them to please pay close attention to what they eat or drink. Ask them to visit their doctor and see if their family doctor has a reason that they are bleeding so easily. Then we would see how their appointment goes the next time around. Did they heal well? Did the ink stay like it should? etc…

Now the reason I bring all this up is that our apprentice ran across this issue. Our first reaction was here let one of us show you… Now pay close attention to what we are about to show you… Hmmm…Did you drink last night or today before you got here. Did you take any pills or any other medication? We will have to have you reschedule your appointment… Jeff learned a valuable hands on lesson today. Sometimes it is not you! Sometimes it is your client. It is times like this that reinforces why you take part in an apprenticeship. Many people would have kept on trying to tattoo the poor client. If the client is bleeding even when they are barely even touched with the needle then something is wrong. Stop! Do not continue tattooing. If you need to finish your line work, just be fore warned that much will be pushed out by the bleeding. The lines will need to be touched up. Your first concern should be your client. Why are they bleeding so easily? Do they have hepatitis and not know it? Are they anemic and they do not know? Is there some under lying health concern that needs to be looked into? Bleeding is not a normal part of tattooing. Plasma a pinkish fluid, like a light sweat, yes. Full on red blood coming out… No. Either you are tattooing them wrong or they have a health issue that is leading to excessive bleeding.

So if this is all part of what an apprentice would get then why would I post it on here? The reason is that it is very important for all concerned. Clients need to know that bleeding is not a normal part. A little blood bit of blood might might come up in a couple of spots, but it should stop almost as soon as it starts. If the tattoo is bleeding it will scab up badly. Most tattoos will begin to peel in about 4-5 days with maybe a small scab here and there if any. If your tattoos are taking two to three weeks to heal you are very heavy handed and need to adjust how you tattoo. There is no reason for a tattoo to look like bacon until it is done healing.

As artists we are responsible for educating our clients.  I hope this was helpful…  Stay safe, enjoy, and see you soon. With respect…

C/S

P. Scott “Scotchie” Chapman Sr.
DCL Tattoo
1404 Crows Landing Road
Modesto, Ca. 95351
209-571-8282

Mat Martin, Jen Cullota, Scott Chapman, Mr. Droopy, Troy Martin, and Pattie Chapman

So here is to those at Dos Changos Locos Tattoo studio.  You can see all of the work on our facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dclt2. I thought it would be nice to mention those folks that makes us who we are.

Mat Martin comes to us by way of Jen Cullota.  Mat was apprenticed by her, and his art work stands on its own.  He loves neo-traditional work and is really into the craft that I myself love so much.  He is currently going to the San Francisco Institute of Art.  He is working on his BA in art.

Mr. Droopy comes to us from San Mateo.  He is a black and gray portrait artist.  He does some fantastic work.  Check him out on our facebook as well as our website.

Jen Cullota is in my opinion one of the best female tattoo artists in the entire central valley.  She is someone who is a well-rounded artist.  Now we see why Mat did so well with her.  She tattooed my left sleeve and my entire back five or six years ago and people still talk about those tattoos today.

Troy Martin is a new hire.  He comes to us by way of California Corey Young.  We welcome Troy here with us.  He does Traditional work as well as piercing.  So we have a piercer again.  Thanks Troy.

I will skip my introduction in that it can be found in the about section on my blog.  My wife Pattie Chapman manages the studio and handles the calls and clients.  She attempts to keep all of us crazy artists happy and supplied.  It is like herding cats!  You know how artists are…

When you call or come by our studio you will find our art on the walls along with some other flash work, but we are in the process of taking any other art other than our own out of the studio.  We are mostly a custom studio and we want to illustrate that by having only our art on the walls.  I had opened this studio as a street shop like you would have found in the 70s-90s.  We try to paint at least once a week if we can.  We draw everyday and try to stretch our art in new directions.  The one thing that I think binds all of us together is our love for the craft of tattooing.  We have a deep respect for the tattoo industry and we try to pass that respect on to our clients and our community, and that is the reason for this blog.

If you get a chance to visit us online or better yet in person, we welcome you and thank you for allowing us to share our art with you.

C/S

http://dclt2.com

P. Scott “Scotchie” Chapman Sr.
Dos Changos Locos Tattoo
1404 Crows Landing Road
Modesto California 95351
209-571-8282