Problem w/ glass retainer for initial jewelry?

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Tuesday July 8th, 2008 @ 5:52 PM

Filed under: Piercing

I’ve asked two piercing studios if I can bring in a glass retainer and have them use that for my initial jewelry in a nostril piercing, and both said no. I was just curious as to why that might be, aside from a policy of having to buy their jewelry. Would a piercer have to do anything differently to use a glass retainer for a fresh piercing? Also, how soon can you change the initial jewelry in a nostril piercing to a retainer?

Thanks!

From a healing point of view, there probably isn’t too much of an issue using a glass/quartz retainer for a fresh piercing. Lots and lots of piercings are done with glass and they typically heal just fine. However, some piercers, including myself and the piercers I work with, won’t use them for initial piercings. There are a couple of reasons, although I would encourage you to ask the studios in question for their specific reasons.

It is pretty common for nostril retainers to run a little “big”…meaning that an 18ga nostril glass nostril retainer might actually be thicker than 18ga. If a piercer wants to do the piercing with an 18ga needle, it could make the insertion difficult, if not nearly impossible. This is especially true if you have larger hands and have trouble hanging on to nostril screws with your hands…many piercers hold their nostrils crews with hemostats when inserting them. There are ways to work around this of course…piercing with a larger needle or doing the piercing and stretching it to accommodate the jewelry to name two of them. The piercers in question may simply not want to mess around with those options.

Some studios, including many studios where the piercers are APP members, won’t use glass in initial piercings because there is no universally-recognized standard for implant-grade glass. In addition, glass is not included as an acceptable material for initial piercing within the standards of the APP. I’m not going to get into a debate about whether or not glass is actually safe to use…I’m just throwing out possibilities.

I tend to find the shape and fit of the nostril retainers good for use as retainers for temporary wear. However, I think the shape/contour of them isn’t ideal in a healing piercing. I feel like they tend to move around too much, and the tails on them tend to be a bit long, making them somewhat irritating to wear in a fresh piercing. Not the end of the world by any means, just not ideal.

The piercers you talked to may have all kinds of other reasons they don’t want to use it. I guess the thing to keep in mind is this…you want the person piercing you to be comfortable with what they are doing. If using a glass retainer puts them outside of their comfort zone, it’s good that they can recognize that and choose not to do work they aren’t confident in.

I would typically suggest waiting at least a month, two being even better, before switching to a retainer.

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