Introducing the Steeldriver. After over a year of design and testing the Steeldriver is ready. It has proven to be an incredibly capable liner and shader with cartridges and needle tube setup. The stroke characteristics of the Steeldriver are different than the other Bowers models in that it takes the stroke philosophy and mechanical give to the next level. The Steeldriver is more snappy off the tip than any other Bowers machine, it still has that mechanical give that keeps you from feeling like you’re skating on thin ice when lining but it’s ability to drop in lines and color equally well off the tip, middle and back of the stroke are second to none.
The Steeldriver design builds off the phenomenon of the cam quarters as mentioned in my book “The Right Tool For The Job”. This is where I explain that rotary machines have a tendency to want to push skin away from the needles as they are coming down because the needles are slowing down on that last quarter of the cams rotation. Rather than punching the needles in like a coil machine they ease in to the skin. The SC Bobber and the Micro Bobber have both been successful at engineering around this phenomenon but the Steeldriver goes a few steps further and eliminates that last quarter of the stroke altogether, the needles come to a complete stop at terminal velocity. What that gives you is an incredibly balanced and controlled stroke that is more capable of lining off the tips of the needles with both large and small groupings. As a shader the Steeldriver punches ink in to the skin with great efficiency. Black and gray as well as other softer techniques can be achieved with the Steeldriver through practice as well.
Ultimately I engineered the Steeldriver to incorporate the best aspects of well tuned coil machines and rotaries together. It is more coil like than any of the other Bowers machines besides my Steeldriver coils, which is why it shares their name. The Steeldriver is plug and play, it’s designed for anyone coming from either coils or rotaries to be able to hook it up and be comfortable with the machine with very little adaptation time.
