#boldwillhold - Introducing Cheyenne Open Liners

The Cheyenne Safety Cartridge needle cartridge range has been expanded to include a group of configurations: the Open Liners. In this article, you'll learn what's behind them, what was done differently than ever before in the tattoo industry, what the Open Liners bring you, and why your work will benefit from these new needles.

The slogan "bold will hold" is probably older than most practicing tattoo artists and we all know why. A tattoo is not something static. Numerous processes take place in the skin that age a tattoo. After going through these aging processes, your tattoos will not appear as clear, sharp, and delineated as they did immediately after being tattooed. Designs with bold, rich lines suffer less from this aging than delicate work. But what equipment do you need to create bold, rich lines? Well, sure, big liner configurations. But how do you make them?
Well, most will immediately answer that you solder more or thicker needles into a bundle and get a larger liner configuration. This is true and has been done exactly this way in the past. With almost all tattoo needle manufacturers, you see needles with thicknesses from 0.25 mm to 0.4 mm soldered together into bundles of 3, 5, 7, 9, and many more needles in the supply. As said, this is not wrong, but leads to the fact that in large needle assortments there are configurations whose needle bundles have the same diameter. This makes sense, because you can use many thin individual needles to create a needle package that is just as thick as a needle package consisting of a few but thicker individual needles.

The big question now is: Do these needle packages of the same size, but with completely different structures, also deliver the same results and are equally good? The answer to this question is clearly no. The performance when tattooing and also the result in the skin differ in part significantly from each other.

This aroused our curiosity and we investigated the matter. We have identified 5 different needle package tip diameters that are well suited for creating lines in American Traditional, Neotraditional and Japanese Traditional.

We found 17 reasonable combinations of needle diameter and number of needles, which we then built up with different taper lengths and average free soldering lengths. In total, there were 172 different configurations, and these had to be tested. We were helped in this by numerous artists. Steve Moore, Teresa Sharpe, Justin Hartman and Julian Siebert were in Berlin for several days tattooing with these samples. They were amazingly unanimous about the performance of each sample. We then had their opinions backed up by artists such as Guy Aitchison, Jeff Gogue and Russ Abbott, just to name a few. The result is our 5 Open Liners in sizes from S to XXL.

But what is different from other liners? Just the name? Of course not. Whereas our familiar liners are squeezed in the tip area and the individual needles in the needle package therefore converge conically, in the open liners they run parallel right up to the tip. Anyone who has already taken a closer look at the construction of needle configurations will now certainly be wondering what the difference is between an open liner and a shader whose individual needles also run parallelly. The answer lies in the taper length and the average free soldering length. These are different from those of the shaders.
The average free soldering length is the area between the needle package tip and the solder joint that is free of solder. If this area is short, as with liners, you get a stiffer needle package. If the area is long, as with shaders, the needle package is more flexible. The effect achieved is similar to using soft and hard brushes in painting. Our open liners have a shorter average free soldering length than shaders. This makes the liners more controllable and the result is more precise lines.
Taper length describes the length of the cut - that is, how pointed a needle is. The regular Cheyenne liners as well as the Open Liners have a Super Long Taper, while Shaders have a Long Taper.

But why do we name the Open Liners so untypically from S to XXL. This becomes clear when you look at how differently they are constructed. Our very extensive tests have shown that it is advantageous for the performance of the Open Liners to let the single needle thickness also grow with increasing needle package tip diameter. Thus, the Open Liner S has 0.30 mm and the Open Liner M 0.35 mm single needles, while the Open Liner L - XXL are equipped with 0.40 mm needles. This procedure is not yet known in our industry, where usually the packages get bigger by adding more needles, but the needle diameter does not change. But our tests have shown that our way is the right way and leads to better lines.
Because we know that you are as curious as we are and that the number of needles and needle thickness have accompanied you all your life as a tattoo artist, we don't want to withhold from you what exactly is hidden behind S- XXL. The exact designation can be found in this table:

If your style features rich, precise lines from crisp to bold, you must try our new Open Liners. See for yourself the quality of the new configurations and lighten up your work, you won't regret it.
We welcome your questions and suggestions at support@cheyennetatoo.com.