Like many of us I had my first ear piercings sitting in the window of Claire’s Accessories. Completely none the wiser about gun or needle piercings with my mum's priority being a good quality earring that wouldn’t irritate my precious ears and mine, the ability to have two guns firing studs into my ears at the same time so the process was over and done with as fast as possible. How many of us can relate to that? I know many of my piercing clients definitely can!
So when I trained as a body piercer this was in fact one of the very first questions I asked: Why is it better to pierce with a needle rather than a gun?
Healing and hygiene. Now let me explain that a bit more… When we pierce with a needle, the needle comes in different sizes and this size corresponds to the needle thickness. When the needle goes through your ear it cuts away away a piece of your ear. That's why you will often see earrings sized by gauge - 18G for example. An 18G needle has a diameter of 1.3mm so this is the size of the hole we take away from your ear and replace with a stud. By creating this space for the earring, it’s far kinder to your ear and easier for it to accept the new jewellery. Combined with an appropriate length bar, you'll get a lovely heal on your new piercing.
Piercing Guns Vs Needles
Now, the piercing gun.. The piercing gun has almost a stapler mechanism. It punches a stud with a pointed end through your ear with enough force that is breaks the skin. The skin is then expected to stretch in order to accommodate the piercing. Something it won’t naturally want to do. A super tight butterfly back fastening clamps the earring shut not allowing for any swelling and barely allowing any air to get to the piercing to heal. Gun piercings often come with the upsell of an aftercare lotion that wouldn’t be necessary with a needle piercing as homemade salt water will do the job just as well.
Now for the hygiene part. I can tell you that when I trained in piercings, I spent just as much of my course learning about the importance of using sterile instruments, needles and jewellery as I did actually piercing. As a professional piercer I have to ensure that once I have used my clamp to pierce someone’s ear that it goes straight into disinfectant. Once my client leaves it goes into an ultrasonic cleaner before it goes into an autoclave - an oven like machine used by doctors and dentist that kills all bodily fluids and returns the clamp to a sterile state. Now that’s just for the clamp! The piercing needles come individually packaged and are binned after a single use. The jewellery itself arrives sterilised and pre packaged also. If not then I repeat the same sterilising process as the clamp.
So here is the problem with gun piercings - you quite simply cannot sterilise a piercing gun. An antiseptic wipe just isn’t going to do the job of removing any drops of blood, serum or skin. Therefore you have a risk of cross contamination. Especially if the earrings have to be positioned in the gun before they are forced through your ears, just think of what bacteria they could pick up on the way. Google it if you dare.
Earlobe Piercing By Doctor
Now the chances of catching anything sinister are very low so my intention with this blog post is not to terrify you but to give you the facts. And the fact is that you cannot guarantee the same level of sterility that you can with the piercing needle.
On a final point, yes gun piercings can shatter cartilage and under no circumstances should the cartilage in your ears or nose be pierced with a gun. Cartilage will not stretch to accommodate a stud like the lobe eventually would, it’s more than likely that not only would it be extremely painful - you’d run a much higher risk of an infection, shattering the cartilage which can cause the ear to collapse, and the piercing closing as soon as an earring is removed.
So if like me, you sat in a shop window at 8 years of age and had your first piercing with a gun, then don’t panic. Chances are that your piercings healed fine. But the future of piercings is definitely with a needle by a trained professional. Let me know your own experiences below!Figure 1 Piercing Gun Let’s begin with the gun. When you consider piercing your child’s ear you want it to be done the best way by a professional if possible. Someone who has been trained properly. Before I knew there was a difference between a needle and the gun my first thought when there was mention of ear piercing would be Claire’s at any local mall. For starters, the gun utilizes the earring itself to make the hole in the ear. The tip of the earring is a 16 gauge tip which then turns into a 14 gauge pole at the other end of the earring once the tip has penetrated (Figure 1). The tip of this earring is pointy, but it is not sharp. Figure 4 The earring has a sort of stair stepping effect. The tip is thinner than the end of the pole where the earring will be sitting after the piercing vs with a hollow needle, once the opening is made it will be the same width as the pole of the earring (Figure 4). The best description of what the gun does to the ear would be taking a baseball bat and driving it into a sheetrock wall. Certainly, you will end up with a hole in the wall but it is not the best way to make it. The hole will be very rough, not smooth or accurate and there will be fraying of the material.
Piercing Guns Vs. Piercing Needles
Figure 2 Hollow Needle Let’s explore the hollow needle (Figure 2) a bit and even my own previous personal misconceptions with the needle. When I first learned of the needle piercing versus a gun I thought the needle took a piece of skin out of the ear creating the space for the earring to go. That is certainly not the case. However, there is a technique in piercing that does this, and it is utilized in some ear piercings such as the conch with a specific dermal punch instrument (Figure 3). I have also been trained on this technique known as dermal punch. The punch takes out a circular piece of skin leaving a hole in the skin. This is NOT what a hollow needle does. Figure 3 The hollow needle creates a slit in the skin followed by stretching of the tissue by the body of the needle, to make space for the hardware to go through. The important part is that unlike the gun the slit is a smooth-precise puncture into the skin. It is not an abrupt blunt object passing through the skin with the same force on every ear no matter the texture of tissue involved.
Please see our video depicting the difference between the needle and gun on a glove. The needle goes right through the glove while the earring requires a tremendous amount of force. Overall healing times will be less with a needle. You avoid the possibility of keloids developing at the piercing site and most importantly infections, which are both common with the gun since it creates such an uneven result.
On the note of infection, it is important to keep in mind that the needles are used on the client then disposed of immediately. On the contrary with the gun, the same gun is used on all customers and it is not disinfected. Even if it is cleaned with alcohol that is not considered disinfected. In order for an instrument to be disinfected against any contamination, it must be autoclaved which the instrument is not capable of since it is plastic and would melt.
Reasons To Choose Needle Piercing Over Gun Piercing
At our facility, we are 100% disposable. Nothing is used twice. Anything that is used is sterile and once it is utilized it is disposed of as medical waste. Detailed aftercare instructions will be handed to you during your visit by the doctor.While there are numerous reasons to not get pierced with a piercing gun, one of the most critical reasons: is that the actual piercing edge of the piercing gun stud is blunt, and not sharp enough to make an actual clean incision thru the flesh. What’s actually happening with a gunned piercing, is that a dull stud is forcefully shoved thru the flesh using a spring loaded mechanism inside the piercing gun. Because the stud does not make a sharp incision like a needle, this blunt force trauma results in a lot of excessive pain, and the piercing channel will be collapsed and never heal correctly. This is why gunned piercings, even years later, will often “hurt” or bleed when changing jewelry, it
Figure 2 Hollow Needle Let’s explore the hollow needle (Figure 2) a bit and even my own previous personal misconceptions with the needle. When I first learned of the needle piercing versus a gun I thought the needle took a piece of skin out of the ear creating the space for the earring to go. That is certainly not the case. However, there is a technique in piercing that does this, and it is utilized in some ear piercings such as the conch with a specific dermal punch instrument (Figure 3). I have also been trained on this technique known as dermal punch. The punch takes out a circular piece of skin leaving a hole in the skin. This is NOT what a hollow needle does. Figure 3 The hollow needle creates a slit in the skin followed by stretching of the tissue by the body of the needle, to make space for the hardware to go through. The important part is that unlike the gun the slit is a smooth-precise puncture into the skin. It is not an abrupt blunt object passing through the skin with the same force on every ear no matter the texture of tissue involved.
Please see our video depicting the difference between the needle and gun on a glove. The needle goes right through the glove while the earring requires a tremendous amount of force. Overall healing times will be less with a needle. You avoid the possibility of keloids developing at the piercing site and most importantly infections, which are both common with the gun since it creates such an uneven result.
On the note of infection, it is important to keep in mind that the needles are used on the client then disposed of immediately. On the contrary with the gun, the same gun is used on all customers and it is not disinfected. Even if it is cleaned with alcohol that is not considered disinfected. In order for an instrument to be disinfected against any contamination, it must be autoclaved which the instrument is not capable of since it is plastic and would melt.
Reasons To Choose Needle Piercing Over Gun Piercing
At our facility, we are 100% disposable. Nothing is used twice. Anything that is used is sterile and once it is utilized it is disposed of as medical waste. Detailed aftercare instructions will be handed to you during your visit by the doctor.While there are numerous reasons to not get pierced with a piercing gun, one of the most critical reasons: is that the actual piercing edge of the piercing gun stud is blunt, and not sharp enough to make an actual clean incision thru the flesh. What’s actually happening with a gunned piercing, is that a dull stud is forcefully shoved thru the flesh using a spring loaded mechanism inside the piercing gun. Because the stud does not make a sharp incision like a needle, this blunt force trauma results in a lot of excessive pain, and the piercing channel will be collapsed and never heal correctly. This is why gunned piercings, even years later, will often “hurt” or bleed when changing jewelry, it
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