At A Glance
Author	T-Snake
Contact	T-Snake@bme.anon
IAM	t-snake
When	Six months ago
Artist	Self to start, a professional to finish
Studio	Body Art Tattoo Studio
Location	Burlington, VT

I had for a few years thought and talked about wanting to get an industrial. Well, the healing time and timing of when I could do it got in the way the most... not to mention that $75 is a lot of money to me.

I wanted something different that I could just DO and have it be done. At the time (this was spring of 2004) I only had common lobe piercings. 4 on the left and 2 on the right. Maybe making something less common would be fine.

Well, I'm not a heavy mod person, in fact, earrings are my only "mods" really. I have interest in other options, mostly piercings, and I'm definitely going to get inked eventually, but I thought "hey, maybe bumping up the gauge of my current stuff would be a good start.

My holes were ALL made with piercing guns, and the last one had been at least 5 years old at the time. The two I planned on starting were always wearing "seemless" hoops. Not really seemless, since the wire that makes up the connection isn't the same gauge. I had already slowly worked the lobe over a little while such that I could just slide the main body of the ring through the holes. It took a lot more work than I expected. I was going form the typical wire gauge to the 1mm, which I believe would translate to a 17g, body. By common standards, that's likely a 3 to 6 gauge jump. I didn't look into it or research it (like I do EVERYTHING nowadays) so I didn't know if it would be a problem. Had I known though, I'd have still done it, just with an upholstery needle or something similar and fed the body through with it. Oh well. I suffered near damage from the rough edges and learned a lesson. Now that I think about it, I had all four of the bottom lobe rind turned through like that. I still have the two in my right ear like that... more later.

So, I spent time at http://www.steelnavel.com/ checking out the options. I checked other sites too, but this one seemed to have the most colour variety. I did NOT want stainless steel. I wanted something purple. Purple is my favourite colour followed closely by green and black. I ordered a pair of 12g purple 5/8" Niobium CBR. Boy was I excited when I got them.

I opened the plastic pouch one was in and examined it. Perty. ;)
It did look thinner than I expected actually, but boy, I didn't know what I was talking about. I put it away and waited until the next day. I took a day off.

I took the one extracted CBR and cleaned it and got stuff together next to the couch to get the show on the road. I had vaseline, so I tried with that. I started by taking out the current hoop and just trying to get the new one in. Pretty stupid.. hehehe, but I didn't give up right away. I thought "it's not THAT much bigger, it's gotta fit". Of course I was also worried I had made a mistake.

"Ok, what have we got around here to help?"
I remembered the upholstery needle/repair kit we have. I have no idea WHY we have it, but we do. I glared at it wondering what might help. There's some curved ones that look a lot like talons (hm, that gives me an idea) and straight ones. I held them against the CBR to check the size and decided if I can't do it with any of those, I'll not be able to do it at all.

I lube one up and start easing it in.

The end of it is a tad larger than the CBR so I figure if I get it through, I'll just push the CBR along with the end... yeah, just like using a taper.
I don't know if it was the vaseline or what, but it just quickly got to a point where it wasn't going any further in, and for that matter, it just wasn't going all that far anyway. I struggled for about 30 minutes trying to ease it in. It wasn't hurting, but I didn't know what would be too much and I didn't want to risk ripping my ear. Eventually I started to look for something else that might have a longer taper to ease in with. I don't remember what I tried with, but I wouldn't recommend it. It caused more pain and it felt like I was cutting myself. No blood though, so I was ok.

I struggled more and more, getting more and more frustrated the whole time. I could not believe this wasn't going to work.

Eventually, I gave up. I got on the phone and called the tat parlor located about 5 blocks away from me to see if they'd taper me. $10 per hole. Sheesh. Um, no. So I called another one (Body Art Tattoo) a little further away. Same deal. I'm like "$10 per hole?!?!"
He said he'd do them both for $10. OK, I could live with that.

So I walk downtown to the shop to get the deed done.
I'd never been in there before. It's relatively newer than the other place. Looks nice. I chat with him a bit about the procedure and he walks me down to the room with the bench/chair/whatever it's called. He has me lay down as he gloves up and pulls a fresh taper out of it's package.

He gets the two CBRs ready and lubes up the taper.

WHOA!! He puts the taper in and quickly drags it through. Whew. It burned! It didn't hurt so much, but burn it did. All was good though. No blood, no rip.. just a glorious new, larger hoop. He asks how it was going. I say ok and he continues to the next one. Same deal... burn, but all good.

I get up and pay him, thank him and take a look at the jewelry at the counter for a minute before leaving.
He did mention that it'll burn for a while, but that's normal.
The walk home was good, there was a somewhat cool breeze to calm the burning. Within a few hours it calmed down a lot.
For about two weeks after it still burned a little, but nothing that bothered me, only enough to notice. After that, it was all good, and I'm glad I had the experience.

Now that I've finally gotten the industrial done, I plan on stretching the two in the right ear to 12g and likely stretching the two others in the left to 14g and put and do an orbital... this time I'll buy tapers, o-rings and better lube to do it right myself. Oh, and jumping from ~17 up to 12... I certainly don't recommend it. And yeah, stretching to only 12g isn't that much in the mod grand scheme, considering most piercings would be done with a 14-10g anyway, but I hope others reading this can get an idea of some of what you might go through.