How do you know if a piercing is good quality or not?
How do you determine if a piercing has all the characteristics of a good piercing? Whether it's for your belly button, nose, tongue, ear or nipple, you have to make the right choice for your body.
Based on the recommendations of the APP (Association of Professional Piercers), there are 4 key criteria for defining a good piercing jewel:
The material that makes up the piercing is obviously a crucial element in determining whether we are dealing with a piercing that deserves our attention or not. In fact, it is even the first criterion to take into account.
You can choose between titanium, niobium, platinum, gold, silver, glass and finally, steel. Each must meet very specific safety standards. We have also written a great article on the subject: What material for a piercing?
To make a long story short, the top materials are: platinum, titanium, niobium and finally steel.
The most commonly used ones will be titanium and steel.
When it comes to titanium, you have very little risk of having a mediocre piercing. Titanium is, by default, one of the best materials for piercings, it is clearly the GOAT. Steel, on the other hand, does not cost much to produce and will generally be less expensive than a titanium piercing.
Be careful though, as the steels are VERY different from each other, we can only recommend that you stay as far away as possible from all steels that are not expressly indicated as being 316LVM grade steel or at worst 316L steel.
Here is a typical example of a piercing to avoid without thinking: This image comes from one of the biggest piercing sales sites of the moment. The grade of steel used to make their products is grade 304. The particularity of this steel is that it is not expensive (about 25% cheaper than 316L steel) and mixed with chrome and nickel to make it stainless. Exactly what you should not find in a piercing since it is one of the least qualitative steels there is.
How to take the consumer for a fool or write in black and white that one is incompetent in one's profession, it's as one wishes. Typically the last thing one would want to put on one's nose, tongue, helix or any part of one's anatomy.
Its creator took advantage of the lockdown to make herself known and develop her piercing business. She has been very successful since then and that is a good thing for her. On the other hand, for you, this means that no safety standards have been taught to her, so she is content to offer you very low-end jewelry at almost the price of titanium jewelry.
Basically, she is selling you one of the worst possible qualities at the price of jewelry that, itself, meets all the required safety standards .
The material is not the only element to take into account. The mirror finish of a piercing is also very important since it is through this process that your ring or labret will become perfectly smooth, without burrs, scratches or traces of machining.
In other words, with a mirror finish we avoid all irritations that are due to friction, we also avoid having microscopic cracks within the piercing itself which will very quickly turn into a nest of bacteria or cause growths, very easily created, in particular on the nose and the ear.
Another factor to consider is the heat treatment of the jewelry. Annealing is a process that makes the metal more malleable, making it easier to insert and remove the jewelry. Poor jewelry is often not annealed, which can make it difficult to handle and increase the risk of damage and micro injuries.
Finally, last but not least, internal threading is an often overlooked aspect of piercing jewelry. With internal threading, the thread is located inside the jewelry, which helps avoid having the grooves of the thread pass through the channel of your piercing and come into direct contact with the scar tissue that is forming. Jewelry with external threading is less sophisticated, less comfortable, and more irritating.
The ultimate piercing for your body, the perfect combo, would be a flat-bottomed, round labret in ASTM F-136 grade titanium with internal threading, mirror finish and heat treatment. Oh wait, isn't that exactly what we're offering you? And be careful, we're not saying that these piercings are perfect because we sell them, it's precisely because they're perfect that we've chosen to offer them to you. It's not for nothing that she's a real professional piercer who got tired of removing the same trendy jewelry from the same brand from her clients' ears.
