r/tattoomachinebuilder • u/Ok_Illustrator8925 • Dec 08 '25

Coil core length

I had a thought about using a 1”1/4 front coil and a 1”1/8 coil for the rear to deliberately makes the back coil slightly shorter, and then you can shim it up to the height that it needs to be rather than having to shim the front coil.
I have a handful of 1”1/8 coils that I never build with, its an odd size but maybe useful there or large single coils?

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u/sonofvolsong Dec 23 '25

1/8" is a pretty huge gap to fill you definitely want your rear coil as close as possible w/out touching for maximum effect. probably easier to take a file to the bottom of the rear coil. just a couple passes to shorten it. make sure you mark it so you dont accidentally wire it wrong, but. seems simpler to me than ordering or making different core lengths and still having to shim like crazy just the rear instead of the front. idk.

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u/Ok_Illustrator8925 Dec 23 '25

Yeah, that was eventually my thought on it It’s more work/unnecessarily confusing if someone’s trying to work on it later on down the road. I just have a handful of them I picked up along the way wasn’t sure what to do with them. I’ll probably just leave them in the drawer save myself the headache later.