Best Starter Tattoo Kit – Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit Review
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Best Starter Tattoo Kit – Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit Review
What is the best starter Tattoo kit for when you want to learn to Tattoo? When you decide to learn to tattoo it can be confusing to know where to start. For this reason I decided to do a DragonHawk Tattoo Starter Kit Review to see if it was worth buying.
Buying a pre-packaged Tattoo starter kit can be the easiest path for beginners. Is the Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit a good one to buy?
A rotary tattoo machine is the easiest machine for a beginner. Dragonhawk make a reasonably priced rotary tattoo starter kit available through Amazon. It includes a power supply and pedal as well as a machine and other extras. It will allow you to start learning how to tattoo on practice skin.
I wanted to test out a reasonably priced Tattoo starter kit from Amazon to see if you could get something of decent quality for under $100.
When you want to learn how to Tattoo you don’t often have the money to spend on expensive equipment. You may want to see if it’s something you can get into first before upgrading.
So I ordered a Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit off Amazon.
UPDATE – THIS KIT IS NOW UNDER $70 !
This post covers my initial verdict as I unboxed and checked out the kit.
My Overall Initial Verdict
- A good solid tattoo machine and starter kit for under $70 off Amazon.
- I have used it for various tattoos now and it runs nicely and works great.
- I use it as a backup machine after my Cheyenne Hawk.
- The power supply and foot pedal that come with it are cheap and a bit flimsy but do the job well enough if you are just starting out and using practice skin. You will want to upgrade when you get the chance but they are fine to start with for initial practice.
- All in all. A decent starter kit with a nice tattoo machine at a reasonable price.
I made a short video of unboxing the DragonHawk Tattoo Starter Kit which you can see below.
Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit
Contents
- Dragonhawk Atom Rotary Tattoo Machine
- Takes cartridges
- Dragonhawk Tattoo Power Supply
- Foot Pedal
- 20 Cartridge Needles
- Carry case
Unboxing
“Hey guys, today I’ve just taken delivery of this little parcel from Amazon and this is a Dragonhawk starter tattoo kit.
It’s not very expensive, under $100, so I’m going to do some unboxing today and see what it’s like.
So, let’s see what we get.
Obviously, I haven’t looked in here yet.
So, it’s quite nice. All comes together in a nice little package.
What’s in the Dragonhawk Tattoo Starter Kit?
It’s got a roll of sports wrap.
A Foot pedal. This feels a little bit plasticky. But it’s all good.
A power supply.
It’s very compact. A tiny power supply. It’s kind of cute.
Two boxes of needles.
So let’s see what needles we’ve got. We have got five mags and five liners.
These cartridges They’re OK, they’re decent quality but I’d say a 5 liner especially is not the best liner to start with when you start tattooing because the thinner the liner, the more difficult it is to get a really nice flowing line.
So, if you start off with these, you going to really struggle and you’re going to think you’re no good when in fact you’re doing fine, so a 7 liner will be a better kind of choice than that.
But at least you’ve got some liners to start off with.
Unboxing the Dragonhawk tattoo machine
This is the machine. It feels nice and heavy.
You’ve got a clip cord.
I’m in the UK, so obviously, this is a UK based plug. If you bought this in the US or somewhere else, you’d have a cable for your country.
This feels really nice, feels nice and heavy. Solid.
I’m quite excited about this because I don’t actually use a pen tattoo machine at the moment, so I wanted to just check this out to see if it’s good quality. To see If it’s a good starter kit, but also it would be nice to have it as a backup machine for me.
So that feels great. That feels really, really solid.
That’s really nice.
These are old Dragonhawk stock that has been discontinued. But basically, they’ve moved on to the new MAST pen and so these are like the old guys that they’re selling off in the in the cheaper tattoo starter kits.
So, this is actually quite a bargain because you can get a decent tattoo pen for a reasonable price because it’s older stock. Build quality is great.
I’m going to do another video where I’m going to try this out.
It feels good in the hand, feels nice and solid.
Yeah, I’m liking that. I mean obviously, the proof of the pudding will be in actually trying it out.
Which I’ll do in the next video. Give it a test run, but you know, initially, it feels great.
Do you have everything you need to start practising Tattooing?
So, you do have a lot of what you need to start practising here.
The only thing I would say is I really would recommend you get yourself some different needles to these because basically, it’s a 5 liner which is very unforgiving.
You are going to drive yourself mad trying to do a decent line with that because it’s so thin you line or be wiggling around all over the place. What I would recommend you get is maybe a 7 liner, a 9 mag and maybe a 9 round shader as well
You need to buy these needles
- 7 RL {Round Liner}
- 9 M1 {Magnum}
- 9 RS {Round Shader}
And that’s pretty good, you know you can do most things with those when you’re practising. A 7 round liner is a really good liner to start with because it’s not so fine as this that every kind of little tiny kink in your in your line will show up with a 5. A 7 is a little bit more forgiving and is a standard size for most tattoos.
What else do you need to start practising to Tattoo?
Get some Black Ink
Obviously, you also need to buy some ink. Get some black ink to start off with.
Get some Practice Skin
Also, get yourself some practice skin. If you don’t want to buy practice skin, you can always use oranges, bananas, butternut squash, a wide range of fruit. Anything with the skin you can tattoo.
Obviously NOT PEOPLE. Just fruit when you are starting out.
You could always try using pigskin which is quite good, but it’s a little bit unpleasant to work with.
Get some gloves
And you want to get some gloves because you want to get into the habit of wearing gloves all the time, so that you know if you do eventually start tattooing people, It just feels right to be wearing gloves.
Also, gloves let you grip things properly, and if you’re not wearing gloves, you just can’t grip the machine or the practice skin.
So start from the beginning wearing gloves and so if you get those things, you will be set up to start learning to tattoo with this tattoo starter kit.
Tattoo Beginner Shopping list…
- Gloves – make sure they fit
- Black Ink
- Practice Skin or fruit to learn on
- Clip cord sleeves
- Micropore tape
Black Disposable Nitrile Gloves
- Nitrile is much less allergic than Latex.
- Make sure you get the right size for you
Dynamic Triple Black Ink
- This is Professional quality deep black ink
- Can be used for lining, shading and mixing greywash
- Vegan and not tested on animals
Tattoo Practice Skin
- Practice your tattoo skills on this high quality practice skin
Clipcord Covers
- Used to cover your clip cord and machine and keep things hygienic
Micropore tape
- To wrap your machine and secure the clipcord cover
Dragonhawk Tattoo starter kit review. My Verdict
I would say yeah, for the price, this is pretty good. It’s $65.00 and I think that’s it looks like a reasonable machine for that.
Yeah, I would say this is a good tattoo machine starting kit.
And apparently, these are old stock, so I don’t know how long they’re going to be keeping doing this kit with this machine in so it might be worth kind of getting hold of one from before they do discontinue it.
But yeah, overall I’m quite impressed.
I couldn’t wait. I had to try it out
Spoiler Alert I actually couldn’t wait to try it out so I had to go and get a banana. It’s great, it’s really great.
I’m shocked that this is $65
It’s a really nice machine.
Banana is quite happy with that.
I think what I’m going to do in my next video actually is run through how you set this up, and so if you’ve never set up a tattoo machine before and you’ve just got all this stuff in a box, I’ll just run through how you actually put it all together.
Obviously, this is for use on practice skin again. Not humans.
I’m going to say again, don’t go straight to tattooing people with this. You really need to put the practice in first for a long time before you go anywhere near people.
So, next time, I’ll show you how to set it all up and how to you set your voltage and everything like that and then you’ll be all ready to go.
What does a beginner tattoo artist need?
A basic set-up for a beginner tattoo artist will include
- A tattoo machine [Rotary is best]
- A power supply
- A foot pedal
- Gloves
- Needle cartridges. [7 Liner and 9 Magnum and 9 Round shader are a good start]
- Inkcaps
- Black ink
- Vaseline
- Practice Skin
- Clipcord sleeves
- Stencil paper
- Stencil stuff – to transfer the stencil to the practice skin
- This basic setup will allow you to practice lining, shading and colour packing on your practice skin.
You can find a full shopping list of equipment you need to get set up in this post Recommended Tattoo Starter Equipment List
https://tattoo-spark.com/what-are-the-basics-of-tattooing-for-beginners/
Dragonhawk Tattoo starter kit review. Is it a winner?
I would say that the Dragonhawk Tattoo starter kit is a good deal for beginners and will allow you to get started on your tattoo career.
I hope this has given you a good overview of this Tattoo starter kit.
If you want further tips please download my free guide on getting started in the Tattoo World
Good luck
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