News from PZM Designs

The Making of a Tattoo cover Posted on 27 Jun 10:43

The Making of a Tattoo Cover

I recently made a tattoo cover for one of my customers. She wanted a cuff to fit on her upper arm to cover the tattoo in a cool way. She needed it to be over 1 inch wide and it needed to stay in place.

After many trials and errors I was able to create just what she wanted. I did several test runs on myself to see if it actually stayed in place. And when I was satisfied, I created this one for her. It is done in bronze which is a beautiful copper alloy and can work easily with any metal color that you already have.

Here is how I did it, in a pictoral.

This is what sheet bronze looks like. I am about to measure it.


I have now measured it and will take it to my huge bench shear.



These are pictures of the bench shear with the sheet ready to be cut,



This is after cutting the bronze sheet.



At the workbench, now and the cuff has gone through the first pass on the bracelet mandrel.


Now the cuff is ready to go on some forming mandrels, from Bonney Doone, to create an anticlastic edge to the cuff, so that it doesn't dig in to the skin. I will be using the special hammer seen next to the cuff to form and  work harden the cuff without marring the bronze.


I now have the cuff on a large bench block where I will hammer the edges to work harden them further and to thicken the walls.



And here is the finished product after filing and polishing. A beautiful tattoo cover for my customer.

You can check it out on
pzmdesigns.com