I am hoping that someone here can help me out. I am repairing an old giant (scaled ~4 times the original) tattoo machine for a very famous tattooer named Lyle Tuttle. I need to complete this project within the next two weeks. The machine was running very slow compared to a normal sized machine so I volunteered to repair it. In the last year I have made a lighter armature bar (definitely helped) and just recently made new coil cores (the old ones were retaining magnetism) for the machine. Now I need to wind them. The original coils are wound on 3/8"x1-1/4" cores with the winding being 8 layers of 24ga. wire wound 1" along the lenthe of the core with phenalic washers at the ends. Approximately 55ft. of wire. I need to know what gauge wire to wind the larger coils for the giant machine. I am leaning towards 16ga or 18ga. The new cores are 1-1/2"x5-3/4" and will be wound 3-1/2" the length of the core. Could someone here help me figure out the rough equivilent to the smaller coils. I would love to give some specifics on the electrical aspects but it will be hard. The item is real old and plugs directly into a 110v outlet. It has a transformer of some sort and a very large capacitor and rhoestat. I can not make out any sizes because they have all been painted black. The original size tattoo machines run around 6-12v dc if that helps any. If you need more information please let me know and I will do my best to try and clarify things. There is an illustration of a tattoo machine and parts at this url if you would like to see how it is constructed.

http://www.machinegunmagazine.com/html/whatsinside...

Sincere thanks,
Marc Lescarbeau