Today we pierced Elanor’s left earlobe with a 1.2mm Braun Introcan needle and fitted via cannula a 1.2x8mm titanium labret with a plain 3mm titanium ball attachment. With me, this piercing costs £25 so for fair comparison that is the budget for her gun piercing.
The price with me includes aftercare instructions and a small bottle of coconut and tea tree oil to be used on any dry skin that may arise around the piercing if it swells. It also includes a friendship bracelet, a Psara Piercing lanyard, a troubleshooting guide to common issues, a lifetime warranty of the piercing, a little mirror, a spare plain ball attachment for the earring and a bag of haribo! She has been instructed to use the oil as much or as little as she wants.
I looked into pricing out of interest and was surprised to find that at the chain store Elanor plans to visit, there isn’t an option of a single ear piercing with titanium. The only alternatives are stainless steel…note, that’s not surgical steel…or rhodium plated gold.
There are important differences between stainless and surgical steel:
Firstly, surgical steel is more expensive. Although surgical steel is a type of stainless steel, not all stainless steel is surgical steel. The earrings are advertised as “medical grade stainless steel” which we can only assume is to make it SOUND like it’s surgical steel, whilst not in fact claiming that it is. Sneaky.
Surgical steel is also known as 316 (or 316L depending on the carbon content) steel, a lot of body jewellery is made of 316 steel and it is sort of fine to pierce with. It contains 16% chromium, 10% nickel and 2% molybdenum. Nickel is a very common allergen, as outlined below so Psara Piercing policy is not to use it, although perfectly legal. Instead I use titanium or bioflex because it is almost completely inert with only <0.1% of people allergic to it. It is drastically more expensive (at my wholesale supplier, titanium jewellery is roughly 2.5x the price of surgical steel jewellery. And that’s SURGICAL steel, not “medical grade stainless steel” which is even cheaper) (the cads).
What the ear piercing gun system in fact uses is not surgical steel, it is grade 304 stainless steel. In practical terms it’s much the same as surgical steel - it contains roughly 8% nickel and 18% chromium. The main difference is that it is cheaper because it is more corrosive than surgical steel, especially with repeated exposure to liquid. Which isn’t necessarily the best property for a pierce of metal that you’re then instructed to douse with fluid multiple times a day.
The next option is 9ct gold rhodium plated which I personally wouldn’t be piercing with.
Apparently:
“Unless you want to turn your gold jewellery silver, plating yellow gold in rhodium is not recommended. Over time, the gold will show through the rhodium plating, gold is often bleached and made white by combining it with other metals” (Website on the internet that I forgot to make a note of and so am not crediting but I’m sure that’s fine)
So why rhodium plated gold instead of silver or steel? It’s a marketing ploy I think. It doesn’t look like gold but it has the word “gold” in it so it sounds like better quality. In fact Rhodium, although itself hypoallergenic, is very brittle and often wears off over time (especially with “repeated exposure to salt or liquid” lol). This means that a fresh piercing may be left exposed to the gold beneath which contains nickel since gold isn’t strong enough on its own. With 8-10% of children and up to 19% of adults allergic to nickel, that’s one hell of a risk. Also, it’ll cost you £50 for a single earring (the piercing is “free” of course).
Maybe I should be putting my prices up.
“Didn’t hurt much, only for a second. I couldn’t feel it afterwards at all and it was all done in a matter of minutes. Very happy with it!” Elanor
Tomorrow she’s off to get her other ear pierced with a gun! Eek!