Tattooing Instrument

Tattooing needle. Olong. Brown wooden stick, tapering to decoratively carved head with a right-angle protrusion in which the needle is mounted. Needle missing. "For tattooing, three needles are bound tightly together, and inasmuch as it is considered advisable to force them obliquely into the skin, they are inserted slightly slantwise in the head of the wooden holder (shaped somewhat like a hammer), and enveloped in gutta-perha to about an eighth of an inch from their points, which holds them firmly in place and regulates the depth to which they may penetrate the skin. " (The Home-Life of Borneo Head-Hunters)