How to Dress up your Industrial Piercing Barbell

When industrial piercings first became popular, customers just wore a basic 14 gauge, 316L surgical steel straight barbell.

As with normal progression, the barbells started to be offered in different colors. The better quality would be in an anodized titanium (so that it would not loose it's color) and lower quality barbells were titanium plated, but the color would eventually wear away.

Soon customers were able to buy barbells with a decoration on the bar, such as a star. If the customer stayed with a small design, they were able to put the barbell into their piercing. However, as the designs became larger there was not enough room to slip the barbell into place, and some designs just could not be worn.

Today the designs are made independent of the barbell. These are made to slip onto the bar, so that you can wear a steel, titanium or gold barbell & interchange your design. 

To put these new style designs onto the barbell, they can slip all the way to one end. This allows the wearer to select bigger designs and still be able to get the jewelry into the piercing. 

The newest designs also have a rubber setting, to snug the barbell and stay in the spot it has been placed. 

For more example of slide on designs visit Industrial Jewelry

Industrial Piercing

An industrial piercing (North America), sometimes called scaffold piercing (UK/IRL) or construction piercing, is any two pierced holes connected with a single straight piece of jewelry (compare to orbital piercing); however, it typically refers to a double perforation of the upper ear cartilage specifically. Two piercings are made, one fairly close to the head (anti-helix piercing) the second further down the cartilage, on the opposite side of the ear (helix piercing). A straight barbell is inserted through the first piercing from behind the ear, travels diagonally across the front of the upper cartilage, then goes through the second piercing, and is secured with a screw-on bead behind the second hole.

The piercings themselves are made with a sterile hollow piercing needle, usually 14g, and the barbell jewelry is worn during the healing period. Sometimes, a pair of captive bead rings (CBRs) are used instead, and are exchanged for a barbell after healing is complete. Although the use of CBRs often results in faster healing, proper alignment of the piercings is difficult when this technique is used. It can be pierced with a flexible plastic tube and swapped for the metal bar when it has healed. It can also be piercied with a 16g barbell. After that has healed it can then be switched to a 14g barbell. Industrials typically take anywhere from three months to one year to fully heal. Most people say that the first piercing does not hurt as bad as the second piercing. However, your results may vary.

Two or more of this type of piercing located on the same ear is typically referred to as a cage.

This industrial barbell was purchased from Pierce This 2! Check out our website to see our entire collection!

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_piercing