body piercing jewelry

Years ago, while i was still in university i got a nipple pierced. The piercer was a decent enough guy but we were away from any large town and their shop was the only one for hours in any direction.

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Piercing guns have been a stain on the piercing community since the seventies. The earlier designs were simple spring-loaded devices that fire a stud into a backing both loaded into the gun’s apparatus. The early designs are nearly impossible to clean properly and to my knowledge haven’t seen any decent improvements.

The worst things about piercing guns are the people using them. Not that using a piercing gun makes you evil or anything but if you prefer a gun then you’re probably untrained. Any decent piercing studio should have professionals that could do a quality ear piercing with their eyes closed, hung over on a Sunday.

Earring shops at malls, staffed with people that have little knowledge of piercing or sterilization are the most likely to use a gun. It’s from these guns that you’re most likely to get an infection. Hepatitis and other diseases have been linked to piercing guns due to their inability to keep sterile. Only recently have piercing gun manufacturers begun designing cartridge systems that address the sterilization issue. The cartridge that comes is the only part that should come in contact with the client, if the cartridge works properly that is. Cartridges are then disposed of between uses.

Also leading to infection was the gun’s method of “firing” the stud through the ear, on the upper ear it often led to shattered cartilage and other painful problems. The latest designs force the piercing stud through the tissue by squeezing a handle that drives the stud. While this may be all right for ears it is certainly not recommended for any other parts of your body. It seems that piercing gun manufacturers are pushing ahead anyway and marketing their guns for general body piercing.

Body piercing should be done by a pro in a studio with an autoclave and proper piercing needles and quality jewelry. I have to say that I’m extremely disturbed by the thought of someone getting their navel pierced with a gun. No trained pro would dream of using a gun over doing it by hand. This said, anyone that chooses to use a gun must be untrained. Why you would let someone with little knowledge of piercing near your navel with a piercing gun is well beyond me.

Another thing that worries me about guns is the jewelry used. For larger gauge body piercing, a hollow needle is used and then the jewelry is placed in the hole. This isn’t pretty but it’s much better that sending something with a sharp point into the skin then stretching and tearing the wound as you push the tapered edges of the stud through. Have a look at this body piercing stud designed for a piercing gun:

Notice the threads on the outside next to the bevel. These are to be pushed through a new wound. This is truly frightening. Also, when a new piercing swells it has a tendency to get caught in the external threads common to cheap piercing jewelry. Good jewelry has internal threads that don’t come into contact with the wound, key feature.

Over all if you’re just getting a standard earlobe piercing with a small gauge stud then a piercing gun isn’t too bad so long as it uses a cartridge system. For anything else, get a pro and spare your some health risks and pain.

Want to know what to look for in a professional body artist or piercing studio, well look no further:

Tattoo removal can take four to ten 15-minute treatments, and doctors suggest a healing duration between visits of four to six weeks. The cost, which is considered cosmetic surgery and therefore not covered by health insurance, can be as much as $600 so you want to be sure you're getting a quality tatto that you're going to be happy with.  You're going to have to live with it for a long time.

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Some dufas in long island was arrested for piercing the tongues of underage girls in his unsanitary basement. 

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Getting ears pierced is just a fact of life for young girls in the modern western world. Navel, labret and tongue piercing is gaining so much popularity that soon it will no longer shock a conservative older generation. Few teenaged body adorners stop to consider that what they’re doing is nothing new. In fact, people have been piercing their bodies for thousands of years.

The ancient Egyptian elite were famous for their love of beauty.  Adorning their bodies with elaborate jewelry served not only a beauty function but also separated the classes.  In ancient Egypt only the Pharaoh was permitted to pierce his navel.  A bellybutton ring for anyone but the Pharaoh was an offence punishable by execution. For any young people who are afraid to let their parents see their new body jewelry this should put things in perspective. At least the authorities won’t come round the house after and throw you in the electric chair!

It’s also well known that most wealthy Egyptians wore earrings to display their wealth. Years ago archeologists unearthed the mummified remains of a man with large-gauge plugs in his earlobes. This five-thousand year old corpse is the oldest example of body piercing ever found. Those plugs in your ears may represent the very first type of body modification ever!

So the next time some conservative old geezer complains that ‘in their day’ people didn’t feel the need to pierce their bodies you have a great argument to throw back. Just tell them that you’re carrying out an act of cultural preservation that dates back more than five thousand years.

For more body jewelry and piercing info and shopping click here.

The most important thing to consider about piercing jewelry is that a new body piercing is a sensitive puncture wound.  Low quality metals, espescially nickel, often react with your body chemestry.  A reaction to jewelry can contaminate the wound and cause infection, migration or rejection.

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After care for an oral piercing

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I found a great set of three photos that show the forceps used for tongue piercing and a special piercing needle.

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Body piercing needles and jewelry

Piercing needles are not for sewing, they're big and scary. Don't let their appearance frighten you.  Piercing needles were designed specifically to pierce the flesh while causing the least amount of pain possible. Their  design also helps the 'wound' heal faster than it would with an ordinary needle.

Maybe you've heard of this guage and that guage needle.  If you didn't know allready the term guage refers to size, small number equals a big needle, big number small needle. For instance, if you're get a nipple pierced you don't want to use a needle lower than a 12 gauge. Lips and nostril can be pierced with a thin 14 or 16 gauge.

Piercing needles are made from surgical steel, at least they should be.  Surgical steel is hypoallergenic and capable of extreme sharpness.  If you've ever handled a surgical scalpel you know what I mean.  Because they're so sharp they slice cleanly through the skin without tearing or pulling. Being sliced through doesn't sound too attractive but it's alot less painful then being pierced then stretched as the rest of the needle goes in. The bizare feature of piercing needles is that they are hollow.  They actually cut a tiny hole through the skin being pierced.

Hollow needles leave a clean-edged, precision hole in your flesh.  Don't cringe, a hole with clean edges heals quickly. Regular needles, that push their way through the skin, tear and bruise the skin causing more pain and leave wounds that take longer to heal.

If having a good clean hole punched through a part of your body with a hollow bit of surgical steel with laser cut percision doesn't appeal to you, yet you still want to get pierced, maybe it's better if you just don't look at the needles.

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It ain’t ear piercing,

The procedure for a good body piercing isn’t the same is for getting your earlobes pierced. Most earlobe piercings that you see done in a mall or jewelry store involve using a piercing gun that quickly shoots the actual earring post through the earlobe. This may be fine for an area of the body that has soft tissue and is easily pierced, but when it comes to your tongue, forget it. 

Some turkeys use guns but they're fairly crap.  They dont line up and they would have to be awfully powerful to get through some of the thicker parts of the body.  Basically you should never go for a piercing from some turkey with nothing but a gun who claims he can pierce your belly with it.

What you want is a pro with lots of rubber gloves and a set of professional piercing needles.  I'll write some more about piercing needles tomorrow.