Black and grey realistic tattoo of a piston and connecting rod appearing through torn skin on the upper arm.

Piston and con rod torn through skin on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a piston and connecting rod, with the upper section of the piston at the top and the rod and crankshaft end at the bottom. The engine parts are rendered in detailed black and grey shading with bright highlights on the metal, set against ragged torn-skin edges. A small touch of reddish tone sits on the crank end, and the tattoo fills most of the upper arm frame.

Realism Upper arm Piston Engine Metal Torn skin

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Vauxhall came into the yard on a flatbed in February, its block cracked along the bore, and the owner wanted it back on the road for a wedding in June. Harry Pask took the job because nobody else in Wakefield would. He stripped it on a Tuesday and laid the pistons out on a clean sheet of cardboard in the order they came out, numbering each one with a scribe. Number three had a scored skirt and a connecting rod that had bent a fraction, the way a pencil bends when someone leans on it.

Keep reading

His father's rule was that a rod could be straightened once and never trusted again. Harry knew this and ignored it for the best part of an hour, because the rod was an old pattern and he had a weakness for keeping things with a history. He clamped it in the press, eased it back a little at a time, and sighted it against the window light. Afterwards he sat on an upturned crate with a mug of tea going cold and listened to the radio on the office shelf, a man reading out cattle prices as if they were psalms.

He fitted a new rod in the end, and a replacement piston from a box with the wrong year chalked on it. The wedding car started first time on the sixth of June. The owner paid in cash and asked whether the old rod could be framed for her husband. Harry said no. He wrapped it in a feed sack and pushed it under the bench, where the sacking still bulges at one corner, as if something inside it has never quite stopped trying to get out.