 In today's video, we're exploring tattoos. The method of permanently adding ink to the human body by applying it underneath the outer layer of the skin. We're experimenting with some of the ancient origins of this art and attempting to make our own tattoo from scratch. Tattoos today come with a lot of stigma, but younger generations are getting more and more tattoos and this perception is beginning to change. As of right now nearly half of all millennials in the US have at least one tattoo. Of the four millennials that make up the HDMI team, half of us have tattoos, myself being one of the ones without. Still unsure if I'd be willing to get one myself, I was able to find a willing guinea pig among the team. Hi, I'm Joey. I'm typically an editor at How to Make Everything. I volunteered to be a guinea pig for this project because I've already got four tattoos. I've never gotten a stickin' poke tattoo before, but I'm very excited to do this. But perhaps by the time this is done, I'll be willing to commit myself to this. Everything we use comes from 8,000 generations of collective innovation and discovery, but could an average person figure it all out themselves and work their way from the Stone Age to today? That's a question we're exploring. Each week I try to take that next step forward in human history. My name is Andy, and this is How to Make Everything. Be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next step in this journey. If you're like me and are hesitant at the idea of making long-term permanent alterations to your body, the sponsor of today's video might interest you. Today's episode is sponsored by Inkbox. Inkbox makes realistic-looking temporary tattoos that last one to two weeks. Their semi-permanent technology sets them apart from the shiny temporary tattoos we had as kids. They have a huge catalog of designs from the world's top tattoo artists. They also offer a freehand ink for those who want to draw their own design directly onto a skin. Head to the link in the description to check them out. I sat down with Rishim from Inkbox to learn more about the science behind permanent and temporary tattoos. I've never tried a tattoo before. I've bought it. Just kind of jump in with two feet and that's it. So what is Inkbox? They're temporary tattoos that last about one to two weeks. They react and stain the top layer of your skin. As your skin just naturally regenerates, they fade away. You said that it's just on the top layer. Is that kind of the same as like you know those glittery tattoos you'd get in like a quarter machine or is it different? Totally different. So those tattoos would actually just sit on top of your skin. It wouldn't actually penetrate any of the layers. They sort of like roll off or kind of peel off. Yeah because this stuff like really doesn't come off. Where in between the skin would that be? There's like the outer layer pretty much like a really thin outer layer of your epidermis and then your dermis. It would fill the epidermis which would be on top of the dermis. What layer of skin is like a real tattoo in? Ink from an actual tattoo will sit on the dermis. So the dermis is actually underneath the epidermis. The skin in the dermis is a lot denser which is why it can hold the ink a lot better and it doesn't actually regenerate. It doesn't need to. You have stick and poke tattoos. Do you have you done them to yourself? I've done one to myself. Okay how was that? It actually wasn't bad. I thought it would hurt a lot more than it did and I actually liked that I could be in control of my shirt and you know everything and it stayed very well. I have a little X on my ankle. Like a year now and I thought it would kind of just like reject out but I actually got it down to that dermis layer so it actually stayed. So how do you really know how far to go? You kind of just have to feel it out. Okay. One thing you'll notice is once you're going along and you kind of wipe the excess ink away you'll see sort of what's staying and when it's really light it's about going over and over again until it's a thick enough line that you can actually physically see it. Okay well thank you so much for that interview. Joey you got this! First up, some history. The oldest known tattoos exist on Otsi, the Iceman, the 5,300 year old body of a Bronze Age man found in the Alps, mummified by the cold. His body was so well preserved that the scientists were able to identify 61 different tattoo markings in 19 different places on his skin. It is theorized that the tattoos were created by puncturing the skin with a knife or other sharp object and rubbing charcoal onto the top layer. So not all that far off from the modern technique of pushing a needle and ink in Otsi just didn't go as deep. The 19 different clusters are thought to have possibly been for medical reasons as most of the clusters are located over joints on his lower back that he was suffering from joint and spinal degeneration and would be experiencing aches and pains. Tatooine has been seen in numerous cultures around the world such as ancient Egypt believed to be connected to the religious ceremonies with markings discovered on preserved mummies like the priestess of Amunet. In ancient Greece and Rome, tattooing was used for identifying prisoners and slaves. Many other cultures around the world developed tattooing as a part of their culture often using similar techniques of using needles made from wood, metal, bone, or even porcupine quills. Their designs have specific meanings and purposes used to signify their coming of age, protection from harm, represented in achievement, and many more. Traditionally their tattooing is most often made with soot or charcoal as these materials were often believed to ward off evil. While practiced by many cultures around the world with different methods and forms, they all accomplished the same process of inserting an ink under the outer epidermal skin allowing to permanently remain. So first up, let's get the item we'll be using for a needle. After a chance discovery on the side of the road while vacationing in Wyoming, Dan, our camera guy, found a dead porcupine that offered a unique tool. So usually I'm the camera operator for the show but we need this porcupine quill and I found this dead porcupine. So I'm gonna grab one. Let's do this. It got me in the glove. You would not want to do this without gloves. Let's go. Porcupine quills are recorded as being used to apply tattoos by the Mandan tribe in North Dakota using charcoal ink. Meanwhile, Lauren checked out a local tattoo artist to learn a bit more on the now modern methods of tattooing. Okay, well we're at Black Coffin Tattoo and I'm here with a very special guest, Jesse. So tell us a little about yourself. Yeah, my name is Jesse Skaggs. I've been tattooing for a little bit over two years. I feel like tattooing is kind of one of those things where it kind of picks who gets into it when I was a little kid and you know people are just like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I was like, well I want to be a bartender, a tattooer, and a rock star. It never feels like going to work. I'm always just going to the shop to make a tattoo for someone. It's fun and awesome and the fact that I get paid for it is amazing. I know the feeling. This is the tube that the needle's going to sit in, be held in place by. This is the needle. You usually put a little bend on it and it goes in the tube. Tube's going to go in the vise. A little grommet to keep it nice and tight on the needle bar. Held down tight by a couple rubber bands. It's like that. Easy peasy. So right now I'm just working here but I'm getting ready to just go out on the road and go traveling out west and see what happens. Yeah. Maybe even some tattooing out in the woods, you know. Yeah, well speaking of tattooing in the woods, I know our episode this week, we're making tattoos out of a porcupine quilt so I'm going to show you. So do you think you'd use this? Or if you don't like that one, we have this one. Yeah, they're made of keratin so we have to sharpen it and sanitize it of course. But how does that hold up to your tattoo machine do you think? I mean I think it would probably still get the job done. Pretty rudimentary. It looks sharp. It'll do the trick. But do you have any advice for us when we're giving it a go? Go hard, go deep, no prisoners. Sick. It looks exactly the same. Right? No difference. Lauren also went and got herself another tattoo and documented the modern process on herself. Now to try and apply these concepts to our own tattoo and prep the needle and make the ink. Oh hey it's me Lauren from How to Make Everything. I'm here at How to Make Everything headquarters to teach you about porcupine quills. As you saw in Dan's video, the North American porcupine coil has barbs. That's what caused it to stick into his glove. We're gonna need to remove the barbs. We don't want it to stick in the skin and resist as we're pulling it out. The African porcupine quill does not have barbs but we will be doing some additional sharpening. In order to see the barbs we have to first magnify it. So I'm gonna come in here. Yeah so you can see that the barbs are facing backwards. They would definitely catch the skin so we have to get them out. Gonna rub it against this copper here. I can physically feel that it is getting a little bit smoother. The bigger barbs are definitely gone. I think that this is probably good enough. This is the African quill. It is not barbed. Oh wait a gosh darn second. What is that? Barbed junior. We'll give it a couple scrapes in the copper just to be safe. Oh yeah, much better. Well not always available for many of the historical tattoos. We wanted to make sure we had invented a disinfectant before we did an episode on tattoos for personal safety. Thanks to our last video on building our own still to extract fermented food waste, we were able to produce a strong solution of alcohol that can be used to both disinfect our needles, skin, and even use it as a base right. Cool okay. All right last week we used the trash juice to make moonshine and this week we're gonna use it as a disinfectant. Pour a little bit in here. Oh still doesn't smell very good. We're just gonna take the porcupine quill, dip it in there, give it a little swish. Oop I dropped it in there that's okay and it should be sterile. Do the same thing with the African quill. Next for the pigment of the ink. Using the oil lamp with olive oil fuel we produce by crushing olives at the beginning of the year we can place a dish over it and collect the soot produced by the lamp. Then scrape off and collect the soot to produce lamp black pigment. Then just need to be mixed with the moonshine to make a paste of our ink. Hi it's Lauren again and we are here today to make tattoo ink. We are gonna use some of the moonshine from last week and mix it with some soot. Before putting Joey under the needle Lauren tested out the quill and ink to make sure it's gonna work. Are you the best baby in the entire world? You're a baby, you're a baby, I love you. Oh my god I need to brush that girl. So an orange peel is similar texture to human skin so sometimes tattoo artists before they move on to human skin will use an orange peel. Dip some of our ink on here and wipe it away. In stick and poke they go over multiple times so we'll just keep trying the circle. Minimalist circle. Confident of success? Time to do it for real on our Joey guinea pig. For safety we brought an experienced stick and poke tattooist who applied the actual tattoo. It's now been about a week since we did the porcupine quill tattoo and it's healing up pretty nicely. Early on we accidentally went through the dermis which you're not supposed to do with tattooing so it might end up blowing out in one spot but so far it looks pretty good. So it felt about like getting poked with a sewing needle, hurt a lot less than like going to the doctor and getting a shot or something like that. With a modern tattoo machine it actually hurts a lot more because it's poking you way faster. We started with the North American porcupine quill and we had to switch to larger one because the smaller one was just a little too soft. Wouldn't actually puncture the skin very well after we debarbed it. Compared to a modern tattoo the lines are not quite as clean but I think we did a really good job with keeping it all together. It really depends on who's doing the actual tattooing. Decided on this symbol which is the air symbol from Avatar at the last airbender. So in total gathering all of the materials took about an hour. The actual process of doing the tattoo took about an hour. The longest thing was actually making the moonshine in the last episode which took about 15 and a half hours. So in total all of the labor was about 17 and a half hours. So rounded up with Minnesota minimum wage this tattoo cost about $145. Most tattoo shops have a minimum of about $50-$200 which just covers like the cost of the needle and the cost of the ink. So this was a little bit more expensive than just going into a shop but compared to a lot of our other projects the price of this was pretty decent. All in all this was a really great experience I had a great time. I definitely don't think I would do one of these to myself not that confident with my drawing ability but it was really fun. Always remember to tip your tattoo artist. I was surprised how painless the process appeared. It was curious to see how well I could do it to myself. I decided I'm going to bite the bullet and actually get one myself. I'm going to do something really simple and try and do it myself with the porcupine quill. I'm going to take a little inspiration from the oldest tattoos that were discovered on Oatsie the Iceman. He had over 60 different tattoos all over his body. All pretty simple usually just lines and crosses. There are some theories that they are correlated to different areas of pain he had and they might have been some attempt to remedy it. So I've twisted my ankle when I was younger. I'm going to try and do one of his type of tattoos on my ankle. See you while it turns out. Maybe it'll feel better. I definitely don't recommend giving yourself a tattoo but because we hadn't experienced tattooists onside to help guide me make sure I could do this safely, I felt comfortable to give it a shot. Completely tattoo here and I think it turned out fairly good. Got pretty solid. Say the hardest part was probably the needles. It seemed to be kind of one time prick only. They started to bend a little bit. So a little difficulty. I just switched it a few times. A few different ones to get it all. Got it pretty solid. Also pretty hard to tell how deep to go because it seemed that if I could feel it it was probably too deep and it was starting to bleed. We'll see. We'll see how well it turns out. Definitely seems to be under the skin. I don't know if it's supposed to be oozing. I don't know if it's a blood or pus or what but something's coming out. I don't know if that's a good sign or bad. Probably not a good sign. Is it? I have no idea. I've never gotten a tattoo before. Yeah so let's see how this turns out and I did it. It was a lot less painful than I expected. The most painful bit of this process was my leg falling asleep halfway through but I got it. I got a tattoo. So it's been a day now. Tattoo is still looking pretty good and no regrets so far. So thanks everybody for watching and thank you to all of our patrons. Don't do this at home. If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on Patreon. We are largely a fan-funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going. Thanks for watching!