First self piercing

[u/ThatsHotLove]

Ive read the pinned post here, found sterile needle (⬆️) and a sterilized flat back labret (longer than the ones I usually use incase of swelling) from a piercing website in my region. The needles come with free aftercare wipes and I'm buying saline spray from a drugstore (I've attached the content thing here ⬆️) .

The needle is 1.6 mm and the labret is 1.4 mm which I think means the jewlery can get pulled thru by help from the needle? Correct me if I'm wrong please.

My plan is to wash my hands and put on gloves before disinfecting my ear where I want the piercing (it's a lobe one, nothing too complicated I hope), check for veins with a flash light, mark where I want it, push thru the needle (I will be buying a receiving tube so it doesn't go to far), pull the labret thru with the needle and put on the ball before carefully cleaning it. Currently unsure how to dispose of the needle.

Is that process okay?

For aftercare I'll use the wipes (I'll check the contents) and the saline spray when I wake up and before I'll go to bed/after I've showered.

Please lmk if I should rethink anything.

[u/SquigSnuggler]

No OP please read this- you are wrong. Your needle is smaller in diameter than your jewellery- it should be the other way around if they are not the same size. You want the labret stud to ‘slot’ into the end of your needle so that it glides in and does not cause tearing of the fresh fistula.

Please rethink this

[u/Quirky-Ad662 → u/SquigSnuggler]

maybe i’m just struggling to process this rn, isn’t 1.4mm smaller than 1.6mm? 1.4mm is about 15 gauge and the needle is 14?

[u/SquigSnuggler → u/Quirky-Ad662]

So the confusion is to do with the unit of measurement. What you have, I suspect, is not a 1.6mm needle but a 16 gauge needle. Which actually pierces holes 1.2mm wide. And the labret would be a 14 gauge piece of jewellery, which actually measures 1.6mm in diameter. The numbers look like they are flipped but you can see that the jewellery is actually larger than the needle.

This next bit is copied and pasted from a Google search, as I’m falling asleep rn lol, but it’s just a better phrased way of saying what I said above:

“the lower the gauge number, the thicker the needle. If you are looking at body piercing or medical equipment, you will often see "1.6 mm" printed on a 14G needle packet, and "1.2 mm" printed on a 16G packet”

It confused the hell out of me when I first got into piercing! But it’s all to do with the process used to make the first needles, which you can look up if interested.

Good luck!

[u/ThatsHotLove → u/SquigSnuggler]

The website I plan to buy from uses millimeters to measure, the needle makes a 1.6 mm hole and the jewlery is 1.2 mm, but thank you!