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June 2, 2025
APPLETON – Big Guns Tattoo has been dedicated to providing the highest-quality body art experience in the Fox Valley since 2000.
Big Guns Tattoo has two locations in the Fox Valley – one located at 172 N. Koeller Road in Oshkosh and an Appleton location at 2031 E. Calumet St., which recently held an official ribbon cutting.
Between the two, there are five artists and three piercers dedicated to providing customers with the best-quality services available, performed in a safe, sterile environment.
Keeping a legacy alive
The shop in Appleton, Manager Brian Ruebenstahl said, is a living legacy to Don DuBois, who passed away in 2022.
Sarah DuBois said she met her husband, Don, in 2001 when he opened a studio in Chilton – where he stayed for about six months before finding an opportunity in Appleton.
This, she said, is really where things started to bloom.
Throughout the next 20 years, Sarah said Don apprenticed artists in Appleton and Milwaukee – many of whom started their own shops.
She said her husband was passionate about educating future generations.
When it came time to buy Big Guns Tattoo’s current building, Sarah said though Don did all the construction before he passed, he did not live long enough to see it open.
“This was his pièce de résistance,” Ruebenstahl said. “Unfortunately, he never got to tattoo out of here, which really sucked. We had a little grand opening slash 20th anniversary party three years ago when we opened this location. It was on a Saturday, and on that Monday, he passed away.”
Sarah said she keeps his portfolio live on the website as a legacy and said they still get emails asking for an appointment with Don.
“He was a powerhouse in the Fox Valley,” she said. “People loved him, and he got along with other studios really well. He was one of those people who created a lot of camaraderie in the industry.”
For the most part, Sarah said nobody knew Don was ill, so it was a surprise to many in the community when he passed.
Today, she said, both Big Guns Tattoo locations and the work the artists and piercers do are a tribute to what Don meant to the region and the industry.
A chance meeting
Ruebenstahl said tattooing is a nomadic career, and as long as you have your machines, you can work anywhere.
Learning to tattoo in 1998, he said he traveled the world until 12 years ago, when he came to Appleton when his daughters were born.
“I learned in Hawaii in ’98, and fell in love with Polynesian tattooing,” he said. “After that, I traveled throughout the Pacific, Australia, the U.S., Germany, Norway, England… the entire eastern seaboard.”
When he came to Appleton in 2013 for a visit, Ruebenstahl said a mutual friend introduced him to Don and Sarah, and within a matter of days, he was given a guest chair at Big Guns Tattoo.
Ruebenstahl said Don told him if he ever found his way back to the Fox Valley, there would be a chair waiting for him.
Though at that time he had no intentions of making Northeast Wisconsin his home – as Key West was home and where his shop was – fate had other plans.
Ruebenstahl said when he found out he was going to have a daughter and her mother wanted to be closer to family, the couple planned to move to the Fox Valley area – so, he called Don and the rest is history.
Not only was it Don’s talent as an artist, but his focus on helping others learn the ins and outs of the business, Ruebenstahl said, that drew people to him.
“He got a lot of people that way,” he said. “That’s just the way it was – he knew the good ones, and he wanted to help them grow. He also knew how easy it was to throw money away on nothing. There were a lot of people who gave him a leg up, and he felt it was his responsibility to do that for others.”
A community asset
Both Ruebenstahl and Sarah said Don made integrating into the community very easy to do for everyone, “because at Big Guns, you were with community members all day.”
“Don treated his customers like they were his best friends,” Sarah said. “He was always available, helpful and he couldn’t sit still – early days and late nights.”
Ruebenstahl said he largely built his own book of business by accepting customers who were not able to get in with Don.
When he first started at the shop, Ruebenstahl said, he discovered that for some customers, Don had been doing their tattoo work since he started in the area, and now their kids – and even grandkids – are starting to get tattoos.
“That’s been the biggest part of the legacy of the shop to me – it’s become a generational shop,” he said. “I’m tattooing the grandkids of my own clients that I got from Don. That’s how old this shop is.”
Ruebenstahl said Big Guns Tattoo was built on branding and a community connection unmatched in the area.
A place for everyone
From the smallest infinity symbol to a full back piece, Ruebenstahl said the main goal at Big Guns is to educate people when they come in.
Within the industry, Sarah said there’s a common idea that some of the tattoos customers have in mind are not good enough for some shops, or it “doesn’t meet an artist’s standard” in a manner of speaking.
Where Big Guns excels, she said, is its ability to have someone for every type of need.
Ruebenstahl said Big Guns’ Appleton location – home to artists Brian Reno, Nick Monty and Desiree Moeller and piercers Jenna Bee and Cody Bauer – has a trifecta of body art, offering piercing, cosmetic and illustrative tattoo and paramedical tattoo.
Moeller, Sarah said, offers paramedical tattooing, including areola and 3D nipple pigmentation for cancer survivors.
The Oshkosh location is staffed by one artist – Jon Handler – and one piercer – Paige.
As manager of the Appleton location, Ruebenstahl said he’s passionate about ensuring everyone feels welcome.
“The tattoo shop is where the elite and the underworld meet,” he said. “Everybody is welcome here. There’s no reason for hob-snobbery in the industry.”
Sarah said folks would be hard pressed to find someone involved in the regional tattoo industry that doesn’t know Big Guns – noting the shop’s reputation in the community and one it actively lives up to.
More than tattoos, piercings
With the Appleton location having both a main floor and a basement, Sarah said the shop is utilized for other things as well, such as hosting art shows.
“The art shows bring a lot of exposure, not only to our customers or potential new customers, but to the other artists and businesses that we work with in the area,” she said. “We get them in here to see what the studio looks like, and that creates camaraderie between artists and business in the community.”
With this past April’s art show being a hit, Sarah said the plan is to host another small show this summer.
She said the hope is to host an annual, larger-style art show on the first weekend of April of each year.
“The building is huge,” she said. “There’s something to see around every corner – it’s a testament to Don, and that’s a really cool thing. If this is the place where artists can gather, why not take advantage of the space? If Don were alive, he would’ve been open to the idea after experiencing the space.”
When they first purchased the Appleton building, Sarah said it was in complete disarray.
Even so, she said Don had a very unique idea of what he wanted the tattoo studio to look like, so they had to do a lot of work to bring the place up to speed first and foremost.
Armed with his experience in the house flipping and construction industries, Sarah said Don got to work.
“He really liked textures in a building, and he loved tin ceilings,” she said. “You’ll see a lot of movie posters and artwork covering the walls – he liked everything to look vibrant and ‘lived in.’ He didn’t want a cold-looking shop.”
One of the biggest things they built at the location, Sarah said, was an entire L-shaped wall in the middle of the store – a feature Ruebenstahl said he and Don always thought it gave the space definition.
Between the main floor and the basement, Ruebenstahl said the 7,000-square-foot building has a tattoo studio, a theater and a tattoo museum with relics from around the world that he’s collected.
An evolving industry
Being in the industry for “quite some time,” Sarah and Ruebenstahl said they’ve seen their fair share of evolution.
The number of women getting tattoos, Ruebenstahl said, has definitely increased over the years.
“When we first started the studio, someone asked me what we’re going to do when tattooing goes out of style,” Sarah said. “I said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen,’ and here we are, 23 years later, and it’s only gotten bigger and better and more popular. People really thought it was going to be a fad, but now it’s just common.”
Both shops are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Find out more at biggunstattoo.net.
