in the 80's/90's where di you get your fat caps?

1. I have fat caps. Im asking about history.

2. Where did the fats and skinnys come from. They wern't stock.

3. Moderator - this is a legit topic.

this is a legit topic.

Thank fuck for that, I thought it was going to be some goofball shit.

Thank fuck for that, I thought it was going to be some goofball shit.

haha

by going out and experimenting with caps they got off other aerosol products.

'Phantom Cap' as they where called on the west coast came from Tester cans. They where not fat caps but had great flares.

I am going to drop some knowledge in here if for no other reason than to preserve it before it passes out of memory. A lot of the shit I'm about to reveal has been rendered obsolete by all the euro caps and the ability to go down to Michael's and buy a 5 pack of caps for your designer paint from Spain, Germany, Greece, Italy or China (via 'stralia). Some might help somebody down the road, but here it is.

Phantoms came on lots of stuff, Krylon fixative, testors cans, and a couple brands of crystal clear acrylic. Rusto fats came on a spray adhesive that shall remain unnamed. There are several versions of this cap with different color inserts and different sized metering slots. Their usefulness varied. The first fat caps I found came on Scotch-guard. They where the old school lumpy style, I have also found those as recently as 2 years ago on an industrial strength paint stripper. There where several that picked up the names of the products they came on: Bug & Tars (NY fat), Jiff-Foams (also fat, if I remember correctly) Spray & Wash (not that good but w/e), Niagaras (also fat). When a lot of those products switched to a male valve/female tip system we worked around it by taking clogged caps and cutting the stem out of them and sticking them in the female caps as an adapter. This actually works pretty good, and I still do it. It gives me a lot of control over the final output. If you where in a real pinch you could take the ink tube out of a standard bic ink pin and make a stem. It wasn't ideal, it only really worked on Krylon, but it in a pinch it would get you by.

This is really only the tip of the iceberg, there were a lot of niche caps that came on products that where only available in small regional markets. Prior to the Internet the graffiti was a very regionalized thing.

daim invented the first fat cap in 89 and sold them through graffiti.org which was started in 85.

The internet was around in 1985?

internet was around years befo' dat

'Phantom Cap' as they where called on the west coast came from Tester cans. They where not fat caps but had great flares.

i always thought "phantom caps" were just the west coast way of saying NY thins.:lol:

I had a old writer show me how to make them or I took them from other spray products. I also bought them from a small shop in SOHO.

i always thought "phantom caps" were just the west coast way of saying NY thins.:lol:

I am pretty sure they are the same cap, made by the same company. If I remember correctly "Phantom" was more of a Bay Area/Central Cali thing, because dudes that came up from LA would call them "Flares" or just "out line" like "My last cap just clogged, let me get an out line off you." I could be misremembering, as this was all 20+ years ago.

yeah, im from sacramento and have heard them called phantoms but ive always just called them "thins" or "thin caps"....started to call them "NY thins" around 2000/2001.

i still rack caps. plenty of good ones out there. i have bought caps less than 10 times since 1996.

im just sayin...theyre out there.

daim invented the first fat cap in 89 and sold them through graffiti.org which was started in 85. alot of people have called him a legal writer but it's funny because if it wasn't for him then bombing would never really exist like it does now. sure you would have some people do stock-tip tags but really, throw ups weren't even a thing until daim invented fat caps. this is the sort of true history you can't google on wikipedia

a lot more "sort of" than "true" history

in the late 80s and early 90s, i got caps off of kitchen magic, spray and wash, testors model paint and liquitex. krylon spray adhesive i think had them too if i remember correctly.

alternating caps was an idea that was discovered, not invented.

graffiti.org was launched in 1984 by susan ferrell in and was the first graffiti website. i know because i was there, in her apartment when she explained it to me and i was like "inter what???". and like someone already said, the internet was around wayyy before that.

the history of retrofitting caps dates back to the early 1970s. Shortly after the idea of the masterpiece was invited, writers realized they could paint faster if they could increase the width of the paint stream. writers in various parts of the city (probably independent of one another) began liberating caps off of their moms spray starch and "voila", the age of the fat cap was ushered in. the fat cap became your fillin device and the stock cap became the outline device. this was standard practice for about 10 years.

In around 1984, the FC/TC5/IBM/FBA family of crews discovered the liquitex cap (known today as the NY Thin) their pieces began to appear on the lines with extra fine crispness. A crispness that had not been seen before in the writing community. for years they kept this cap a trade secret. i know personally when i used to see West, Emad, Koze and other pieces from this group of crews, i thought for sure they were using some sort of stencil. in the later 80s, the cat was out of the bag and people were using it all over the country. this cap was also discovered on testors model paint. and so testors and liquitex were getting vicked for their caps left and right. but it is without question and a historical fact that the members of these crews were the first to use a cap which produced a crisp clean line. all the masters that came before them, Dondi, Skeme, Part, Slave etc. did game changing work with stock caps and fat caps. but the game changed again when the these dudes did their thing. they set a trend and started something that is still very much part of the culture today.

late 80s early 90s someone realized that if you can somehow get in touch with the manufacturer of aerosol spray nozzles, you could order them in bulk. the first person i knew that had them in mass amounts were writers in LA. My homie Porn from LA used to send me NY thins in the mail with flicks. by the 90s Frame and Power from LA were slangin them like crack. if anyone here goes back that far you may remember Frame on videograff with those big ass bags of rusto fats and NY thins. Not saying they were the first ones to order caps in bulk, but they certainly made it popular and brought it to the larger graffiti community.

today everyone knows the deal with caps. i went to Sam Flax to buy paint and asked the girl for some caps and she whips out this book with pictures of caps and a corresponding photo of the type of stream the cap makes. it was overwhelming for an old fart like me.

this is obviously not the COMPLETE history of caps but it is a little more accurate that saying someone invented caps.

#ijs

Goddamn, I'm about to date the he'll out of myself but I remember seeing that shit with frame, it was videograff 8 if I remember correctly. We had a copy of a copy of a bootleg. I was like "Gawddamn!" I had just spent all day riding busses all over town all to get a measly handful of caps.

 

graffiti.org was launched in 1984

 

ehhhh, the year was actually 1994, not 84.

by going out and experimenting with caps they got off other aerosol products.

That was obvious wasn't it.

 

today everyone knows the deal with caps. i went to Sam Flax to buy paint and asked the girl for some caps and she whips out this book with pictures of caps and a corresponding photo of the type of stream the cap makes. it was overwhelming for an old fart like me.

 

 

 

#ijs

it IS a little much these days. like 40 different fat caps out there. personally i use 1 type of cap about 90% of the time for everything. i grab a few every once in awhile and clean them out and they last for months. newer paints seem thicker so it might not be as easy to clean caps if youre using ironlak or whatever cool guy paints are out there. rusto. forever!

good info by the way. i remember back when i first started toying it up i was sure i was just THAT bad because i couldnt get a can to spray THAT clean compared to what i was seeing on freights ( there was hardly a graffiti scene here at that time). i think it took me like 6 months to discover fat caps. then i realized i was just bad not terrible. haha.

I used to go to art stores and take the caps off cans of krylon crystal clear and put them in my mouth, I planned on spitting them at the clerk if anyone gave me shit. We called em softball caps but others called em phantoms.

Also purchased thins through bills wheels mail order and maybe some store in SF but I do not remember.

^^HA yeah, my homie chase from LA used to do that shit. i was like WTF cause i had never seen anyone rack like that before.

I remember Big Wheels too..old school shit.

I used to go to art stores and take the caps off cans of krylon crystal clear and put them in my mouth, I planned on spitting them at the clerk if anyone gave me shit. We called em softball caps but others called em phantoms.

 

Also purchased thins through bills wheels mail order and maybe some store in SF but I do not remember.

we got followed by a loss prevention undercover type at target back in the day. had all these random caps and tossed em into the magazine rack and came back for them the next day. they also called the cops on us once when we BOUGHT 2 cans of paint. cop was outside waiting to question us about why we were buying paint and what we were tagging. haha. GET REAL BOZO.

daim invented the first fat cap in 89 and sold them through graffiti.org which was started in 85. alot of people have called him a legal writer but it's funny because if it wasn't for him then bombing would never really exist like it does now. sure you would have some people do stock-tip tags but really, throw ups weren't even a thing until daim invented fat caps. this is the sort of true history you can't google on wikipedia

Very very fucking relevant and accurate.

I'm only born in 83 but this is the kind of stuff writers really need to know.

I've seen some talented dudes get shit wrong .

Eg the other day I saw an Aussie Writer do yellow peice with red stars and a ,Cheech Wizard character and under the character he wrote Cheech Lizard.

Perfect example of shit getting wrong through word o mouth.

The guy has obviously never seen a real Vaughn Bode cartoon.

Other wise he'd know it's junkwaffel and Cheech Wizard..

People don't do their homework nowadays.

But still wanna be the pinnacle of Graff.

The pinnacle is only ever illegal on the street or public trains etc

Preach brother

female oven cleaner caps are the truth, and you can get them from most any grocery store.

Multi purpose aerosols, like window and oven cleaners.