Welcome to Fabio Mendez Handmade Tattoo Machines!

Little I knew, when I got into tattooing back in 1994, that I would end building these strange looking tattoo machines that I barely understood how they worked. After hitting human skin for the first time 2 years later, and starting tattooing professionally in 1997, I did my best to develop my skills tuning and adjusting my machines, and improving my tattoo work with a better knowledge of machine performance. Back then it was really hard in my country, Spain, to get any useful info, when there was no internet yet, and artistic tattooing as we know it today was in a rather primitive stage. I knew I could make my machines work better, and it became an obsession to assemble and disassemble them and try new parts and different set-ups, sometimes even before and after of every tattoo!!

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After a lot of research and experimenting, I started building my own machines in the mid-late years of the 2000s decade. It was all very natural and not premeditated: I built machines for my own use, then for other people, and my work increased in arithmetical progression as other tattooists tried my machines or heard about them, and my work was demanded more and more, until it got to the point of stopping tattooing in 2011 to dedicate exclusively to machine building. Nowadays, I just tattoo some friends from time to time, as it’s something I don’t want to quit definitely, but my main occupation and activity is machine building.

My workshop is quite modest: I don’t rely on a lot of machinery, I prefer to use rudimentary tools and my own hands, instead. I focus on keeping it as traditional and handcrafted as possible, and a drill press, angle & bench grinder, MIG welding machine, a torch and a lot of files and buffing wheels is all I use, ensuring the term “handmade” is honored at its best.

Enough talk about me, welcome to my website and have fun browsing the other sections!!