The Next Big Thing? Microdermals and Surface Anchors Microdermals — or “surface anchors”, or simply “anchors” — are a design of body jewelry that allows for a “single point” piercing. That is, a piercing that has only one visible end or bead. So for example, it allows one to place a single gemstone in a third eye position, and because of its design, no invasive procedure is required to implant it — it does not have the complexity of implantation of a transdermal implant (although it may have some of the complexity of removal). In addition, its versatile nature makes it an excellent tool for unusual formations of piercings as of course any number may be placed. “THIRD EYE” MICRODERMAL PLACEMENTS; LEFT: IAM:PUREANGEL BY BRIAN DECKER, RIGHT: BY JOHN DURANTE (IAM:JAWN D) Since their introduction as a prototype by Custom Steel at APP 2006, microdermals have been explosively popular with most users becoming convinced that these could be the next big thing in piercing, and arguably the first “new” idea in some time. That said, the technology has been around in other forms since the mid-nineties — Steve Haworth went through several designs of transdermal implant which heavily influenced their design, as did the single point pocketings first promoted by Jon Cobb, as well as dermal anchors (gallery) and other DIY-anchor techniques. In addition, surface bars, and especially the later punch-and-taper (or punch-and-elevate) procedures, involved related techniques and healing, which influenced the design and development of microdermals. Since they’ve been growing in popularity now for a solid six months, I feel somewhat tardy waiting this long to talk on the public record with artists performing microdermals, but the good side of that is that now enough time has passed that people can reflect on healing and the ongoing development of microdermals and related procedures. Let me begin by introducing the people I talked to (in no particular order), a small cross-section of the piercers and jewellers performing this procedure and making these devices. Ask around to find more! BASIC MICRODERMAL DESIGN — A SMALL BONE PLATE WITH HOLES FOR TISSUE INGROWTH, AND A THREADED POST FOR THE ATTACHMENT OF DECORATIVE ENDS. Oh, and just so there’s no confusion — these interviews were conducted separately, so don’t read anything into any implied interactions between them! Bryan Thomas Mojo Studios, Peoria, IL iam:cellfire Didier Suarez Enigma Professional Piercing, San Diego, CA iam:DidierS John Joyce Scarab Body Arts, Syracuse, NY iam:j_scarab Steve “Travelling” iam:micro-wave James “Wizzer” Wisniewski Hollywood, CA iam:Wizzer Brian Decker Pure Body Arts, Brooklyn, NY iam:xPUREx Pat Pruitt Custom Steel Body Jewelry iam:[email protected] JLo (John Lopez) Slave to the Needle, Seattle, WA iam:JLo IME Integrity Body Jewelry iam:IME Shannon Larratt BME iam:glider    How would you describe what a microdermal is? BRIAN The idea is to give the aesthetic look of a transdermal implant but with the simplicity and safety of a piercing. DIDIER A microdermal is a single-point surface piercing with a threaded changeable end. JLO I don’t call them “microdermals”. I called them single-point-piercings until Industrial Strength introduced their surface anchors — I like that name. Eight or nine years ago I tried something like them, using 14g fishtail labret jewelry — which was a horrible disaster. Maybe a year and a half ago I saw somebody on IAM was using nostril screws and having some success. I tried some myself with not so good results — the results were 50/50 at best. PAT Sorry to say, but bending up nostril screws to be used as anchors is super-ultra ghetto if you ask me, and being a part of this industry, I hated to see something misused like that. There is enough talent in this industry to have stuff like this professionally made — hence the new microdermal. JLO A fellow piercer at Slave to the Needle, David, and I started drawing pictures and debating design ideas to create something similar to the transdermals in David’s scalp but much smaller. We wanted something that required standard piercing tools only — no surgical tools. Something any seasoned professional piercer should be able to do. Strangely enough, I got the call from Pat at Custom Steel that very week. MICRODERMAL JEWELRY; LEFT: IME’S PROTOTYPES, RIGHT: IS SURFACE ANCHORS (ALMOST IDENTICAL TO CUSTOM STEEL MICRODERMALS), INSET: ANCHOR BY BRIAN DECKER PAT I started playing around with the idea about a year ago after seeing the dermal anchors being installed. I thought that piece of jewelry really sucked ass for that particular application (it was more or less a bent up nostril screw). I gave it a lot of thought before sending a CAD drawing to John Lopez to check out (because of his experience with dermal anchoring) and Phish (because of his experience with implants) to get some initial feedback in February of this year. JOHN When I first saw the dermal anchors, I knew they were a bad idea… but I thought it had potential. A few practitioners started doing variations of the “dermal anchor” with bent nostril screws, but I still wasn’t sold. The first true microdermals I heard of were Pat from Custom Steel’s pieces at APP 2006, machined out of solid titanium. This new design made far more sense to me. It had borrowed from transdermal design. It had little holes in the base that the skin could anchor in, but was small enough that it could be inserted easily, without the need for a scalpel, sutures, or elevators. JD from Industrial Strength had designed a very similar version, and offered me samples — I was amazed at how small they were. It was mind blowing! They came with a healing nub, very similar to transdermals, but any 14 gauge bead could screw onto them. JLO A few months after I talked to Pat, I was invited to visit JD at Industrial Strength. He flew me out to California and took me on a tour of his manufacturing facilities and showed me his version of the very same idea. He was calling them “surface anchors”. This is a great name because it doesn’t sound quite so “medical”. JD gave me a bunch to try out and I instantly knew these things were going to get big… and I still think they will. PAT Noah Babcock from Evolution Body Piercing in Albuquerque, who I would consider a master at surface piercing, guided me through potential installation procedures with such a small device, staying in the realm of common piercing instruments. The goal was to produce an implantable fixture, that could have interchangeable ends, that could be installed with no medical tools, but only common tools found in any shop — so no scalpels or punches… just piercing needles and tapers. The first prototype run debuted at APP 2006 and went out to a handful of clients on the down-low… they’re healing very nicely with no issues. TYPICAL MICRODERMAL INSERTION — 1. ENTRY/EXIT POINT IS MADE USING A NEEDLE OR DERMAL PUNCH; 2. MICRODERMAL JEWELRY IS INSERTED INTO THIS HOLE AND USED TO ELEVATE A POCKET AS NEEDED; 3. JEWELERY IS SETTLED INTO PLACE. BRYAN After I saw pictures on Pat’s page I thought they were neat, and I tried one on myself. STEVE I started hearing about them this summer when several of my friends began talking about them and I got messages from manufacturers advertising them. At first I had a lot of fears and apprehensions regarding them, but my friends kept telling me of their successes with them. After I kept hearing positive things about microdermals, I did my first in August on a good friend of mine, a ‘third eye’ placement. BRIAN I actually began doing something similar about a year ago, but with a different design of jewelry that spiralled into the entrance. The piece had a central base point rather than the more common design which anchors itself mostly only on one side of the base. The idea, for me, came about quite a while ago, when I was searching for a more cost effective way of making transdermal implant pieces. The first one I did was, and still is, in the wrist of iam:Peck. WIZZER I also started working with the microdermal concept using hand-bent jewelry. I started using the microdermals produced by Industrial Strength a few months back and I am now working with prototypes made by IME of Integrity Body Jewelry. Overall, I’ve done over a hundred of these, every one being successful in both procedure and healing! IME I did a few with nostril screws in 1999, but ever since Pat from Custom Steel came out with them at APP this year I have had a ton of people asking me to come up with a design of my own. I have been prototyping them for a few months in my spare time and started doing them on friends, to make sure the design is stable. MICRODERMAL PROCEDURE BY KEITH ROMAN (KYKLOP TATTOO, PITTSBURGH PA)    Does anyone specific deserve credit for developing the microdermal? PAT I think I can solidly hold claim to the latest design of the microdermal, hell, I even coined the term “microdermal”. STEVE I agree. BRIAN Yes, the pieces I make are based on Pat’s design. They’re much easier to insert than my older idea. JLO I think Pat and JD both were working on them at the same time, and IME at Integrity has come up with a variation that just might provide some specific solutions. I know that many piercers have been working on the idea for well over ten years. WIZZER I’m sure the idea of single-point microdermals or dermal anchors have been used by many people in shops never heard of, so I can’t give credit to anyone specific. DIDIER It seems the design was no more than a small bone plate with a 3/32” barbell post placed to one side. After the first prototype was made and we all started testing the prototypes, we’ve had three or four changes in the anchor since the beginning.    Why use a microdermal instead of a surface piercing, a transdermal, or even an older method like a dermal anchor (or single-point pocketing)? BRYAN Movement barely affects microdermals. Time will prove that statement, but I’ve seen microdermals be successful in places where surface bars would fail. The really great thing is the procedure — because they’re so tiny, there’s no need for an incision or sutures — it’s just a 14 gauge needle! JLO I’m not sure what the difference is between “microdermals” and “dermal anchors”. I’ll refer to the 14ga single-point jewelry as anchors from this point on. The main advantage of anchors over transdermal implants is they’re frickin’ tiny! The fact that a needle and a pair of hemostats are the only tools needed rocks! Anchors can be used to create odd number patterns that weren’t possible with surface piercings — they can be placed nearly anywhere you want. And of course, we can now “bedazzel” tattoos! Weeee! JOHN Microdermals should replace older methods like dermal anchors all together. I think there are some instances where a microdermal can replace a transdermal, but not in every instance. BRIAN A microdermal seems to be more stable in areas of movement than a surface bar is because of the reduce pressures, but I believe transdermal implants are a more permanent, sturdy, and stable procedure, mainly due to their size and centred bases, and less likely to tear or reject. JOHN I’m far more comfortable offering the microdermal to my clients, since it can be done without the surgical aspects that a transdermal requires, making it safer for myself and the client. A microdermal far easier to remove, with less scarring involved. PAT It’s a transdermal on a much smaller scale, but in comparison to the dermal anchor they’re one and the same — just a different base design with the interchangeability of decorative ends. I’m sure there will still be a place for surface piercings on some individuals, but with the microdermal, it opens up the door for precision placement, less trauma, faster healing time, and almost zero migration issues. Compare that with the issues involved with surface piercings! I do believe this will replace surface piercings. WIZZER These microdermals will be giving surface piercings a good run for their money, but won’t replace them. It definitely opens many new placement opportunities, and healing times are drastically shorter, and longevity better, than with surface work from what I’ve seen. I’ve also been using these in replacement of standard navel piercings on clients who have a “true” or “outie” navels! Another use for these are lip or labret piercings, making the concern about tooth damage and gum erosion a thing of the past. DIDIER I’ve also done them for labrets, cheeks, and other oral piercings for prevention of gum recession, and they work great. WIZZER While working with these for the past six months, their popularity has been increasing rapidly. People who have no interest in piercing whatsoever seem to love the idea of having some “bling” off to the corner of one eye. A new door has definitely been opened. DIDIER Because microdermals are independent, it allows the skin to move, pull, and stretch freely. You still have to pay attention to the bodies folds and creases, but the free movement allows the body to heal with less scarring. Coming from the perspective of a service that could be offered to clients in a regular walk-in studio, I think it’s a less invasive modification than transdermals, and can offer some of the same desired looks. JOHN I kind of rate these new microdermals right along with surface piercings, but, to be honest, these microdermals in many instances are actually easier to do that some surface piercings. That said, most piercers don’t fully understand how surface piercings work, and most aren’t using the correct jewelry or placing them properly. I’m sure that many piercers won’t get how these new microdermals work. I only wish that practitioners that didn’t understand would ask someone who does, instead of trying to figure it out on their own by using clients as guinea pigs. “FRANKENSTEIN” MICRODERMALS BY WIZZER    Do you consider it an implant or a piercing? BRYAN It’s easier to get done than a “normal” implant, since it doesn’t require minor surgery, but you are still putting something under the skin that may require some effort to get out. So it’s still an implant. PAT You’re using piercing-only techniques to install an implant — so it’s a hybrid. BRIAN Once healed into place, for removal the microdermal will need to be cut out. It still won’t be as difficult to remove as a transdermal, but the client most likely will have a very difficult time trying to remove them alone. DIDIER The tissue through the holes isn’t as strong as most would believe. JLO I think it’s a piercing. Definitely. In fact, I charge the same for an anchor as I do for a nostril piercing! STEVE It lies in the middle. Being that they can be inserted via traditional piercing techniques, they’re very accessible to artists who feel comfortable with doing piercings but not doing implants. JOHN It’s definitely closer to a piercing. One thing I love about these so much is they can be done with a piercing needle. In areas with strict regulations, where implants, or the use of scalpels, are prohibited, microdermals should be fine since the only thing you need to install them is a piercing needle. DIDIER I think it’s a piercing all the way.The anchor is like a one sided flat surface bar. IME It’s closer to a piercing in my opinion.    Do you mind describing the procedure you use to install them? JLO I pierce the skin using a 12 gauge needle, in a similar way to how I do surface piercings, but the needle only goes in the depth of the bevel and then comes right back out. Then I use a modified pair of hemostats to hold the anchor (with a mini disk screwed in), and do the insertion. DIDIER I’ve done over a hundred with needles. I used a 10 gauge at first, which I suggest for beginners, but I’m going between 12 gauge and 11 gauge right now. Some parts of the body require a small needle because of the thickness of the tissue. BRIAN I install microdermal pieces into pockets, fully in the subcutaneous layer of skin, through a 1.5mm punched hole. After punching out the entrance point, I use a small 2mm wide flattened elevating tool to make a pocket for the main, longer part of the microdermal piece. I turn the tool around and make a second, smaller pocket for the “heel” of the piece. With the jewelry threaded onto a 2mm taper, I insert the long section of the base into the larger pocket and push in and downward until the punched hole is stretched enough for the “heel” to snap down into place. Last, I unscrew the taper and thread on the chosen end piece to the base. Generally, the pieces I use have 3mm tall lifts, and are about 5 or 6mm long. STEVE My procedure was taught to me by Leo Ziebol of 5 Point Studios (iam:5point). To make the channel, I use a 1.5mm biopsy punch with a small silicon o-ring on it to control depth. I attach the microdermal to a threaded taper and slide the ‘foot’ of it under the tissue, using the ‘foot’ to elevate the skin and find a good area for the base to lie. The ones I’ve used have a smaller end on the other side of the base, and I massage and manipulate the skin to place this end at the same depth as the other side of the base. After making sure it is sitting well, I remove the taper and attach the end [bead] on top, lightly massaging the tissue afterwards to ensure it all sits properly. IME I use a needle. The microdermals that I have been making match the crescent shape a needle makes. JOHN I tried a couple with a 10 gauge needle. Everything went fine, but I found I like a 1.5mm dermal punch better since it is very similar to how I do surface piercings (using the “punch-and-taper method”). What I do first is clean the area with Technicare, and then mark where it is going to be. I pinch up the skin where the mark is, and insert the 1.5mm dermal punch straight down into the skin. Once that hole is there, there is no need to use a taper to elevate the skin like you would with a surface piercing — you can just use the leg of the microdermal to separate the tissue for itself. Using a pair of hemostats, I hold the microdermal by the healing nub, and place the long leg of the piece into the hole, lean it back, and pop the short leg into place. The whole procedure is very fast; faster than a surface piercing. WIZZER I use a 1.5mm dermal punch to create the initial hole for the base to be inserted through. I found that I get a better, more flush seating with the jewelry under the tissue using this method, as opposed to using a larger gauge needle. For easier insertion and better control, I use threaded tapers as a handle which screw into the base. Then it’s a simple pinch and push to seat the jewelry in the hole. The threaded taper then unscrews, and the desired threaded end is put in place. I only finger tighten my ends to prevent the base from rotating under the tissue when the ends are changed. LEFT: BAT EYES TATTOO DECORATION BY KEYLAN LEVINE (IAM:XKEYX), RIGHT: TWO WEEK OLD CLEAVAGE ANCHOR BY DIDIER    How is the procedure from the client’s point of view? Is it something people want anaesthetics for, or is it no more traumatic than a piercing? BRYAN It’s on the same level as a surface piercing. Anaesthetics aren’t really necessary for doing them. JLO In certain parts of the body it can hurt quite a bit, but in other areas it’s just stupid-easy. Thicker skin such as the lower back creates a much more intense sensation, and thinner skin with a lot of elasticity such as the forehead or throat is easier. DIDIER I think the procedure is the easier than most piercings, if done right. Sometimes it can take a minute to make sure the anchor is sitting flat, but better then than later. BRIAN Anaesthetics are never necessary for installing microdermal pieces. The entrance punching is usually the most painful part of the procedure, and is very minimal. It takes less time to put in than a punch and elevated surface bar, and is even less intense than that. Installing a microdermal piece usually takes under a minute. STEVE The friends I’ve installed them on so far say it is a very light procedure — they have been quick, clean, and easy. JOHN Anaesthetics aren’t necessary at all. As I said earlier, it’s basically the same technique I’ve been using for surface piercings. The clients that I have done the procedure on have all said it was one of the easier procedures they have been through.    Have you done many? BRYAN Just the one on me. JLO Well over forty now I’m sure. DIDIER I’ve had the advantage of working with Industrial Strength from the first prototype. So, like I said before, I’ve done over a hundred, and I have a few projects that required multiple anchors. STEVE I have only done four — a ‘third eye’, and a set of three on a sternum. So far the third eye has healed without any incident, and the sternums, which at first were bothered by the person’s activities combined with the ends, are now doing well. JOHN At this point I’ve done a bit over a dozen of them, and have a few more lined up. All the ones I’ve done so far are still in, and have healed, or are healing fine. I’ve only removed one so far. That wasn’t due to any healing or irritation problems — the person needed it removed for her job. BRIAN I’ve done quite a few now, yes. They are growing more known and are a more stable option for a lot of areas than surface bars — but I only suggest them for clients who know they will not be as easy to remove as a surface bar.    How have they been healing, and what is your recommended aftercare? BRYAN Mine is about a month and a half old, and healing has been very, very easy. I’ve gotten a little crust out of it and that’s about it. I used the LITFA method along with H2Ocean five or six times — I’m really lazy when it comes to aftercare. So far, things are going well, and it’s been one of the easiest things to heal ever… much easier than a surface piercing. JLO Healing seems to be fairly consistent from person to person, and body part to body part. I’ve noticed that it takes longer than I suspected — about three months. At about six to eight weeks they often become quite “juicy” and a bit angry. Then within a couple weeks they settle back down and finish healing. I only suggest warm, moist compresses when they itch, swell, or otherwise need attention. Otherwise I suggest completely ignoring them. STEVE The aftercare I’ve suggested has been the same I suggest for a standard piercing — keeping the piece safe, free from stress, free from irritants, clean, dry, and just generally giving your body a good environment to heal in. The healing processes have been uneventful and comfortable for the wearers. BRIAN Thus far I don’t know of anyone that’s had problems with my microdermal pieces. Even in the center of iam:amnesiac’s lip, it appeared healed in only a week or so. The only real problem I had with one was Steve Truitt’s nape — the piece I was using from Industrial Strength only had a 2mm rise, and the tissue in his nape was much thicker. We only had a disk end piece at the time, which made for a much too tight fit. The aftercare that I suggest is no different than with a surface bar — dry heat compresses and sterile saline washes is all I have my clients do for healing. DIDIER I’d have to say 98% success in healed healthy anchors. I’m suggesting cool saline pads for the first day or two, and after that I’m having my clients do warm compresses with saline. I’m asking that they not change the end for two or three months.    Wow, 98%? You think you’ll really get 98% success in the long run? DIDIER Time will tell. I think certain placements will do better long term. IME So far complete success. I recommend taping it for the first few days, keeping it dry, and leaving it alone — but I am a “leave it alone” kind of guy. JOHN Healing success so far has been great, and no problems have been reported. I’ve basically been telling people to leave them alone — keep all soaps, lotions, and everything else away from them. I do like the Simple Care Spray from Body Art Pro. The client can just spray it on once or twice a day — that way they feel like they are cleaning it, so I don’t have to worry about them trying something else that may irritate it! WIZZER My suggested aftercare for these is the same as any piercing I do: an inverted cup of warm saline solution, held to the piercing for five minutes, twice daily, followed by the area either air drying or being pat dried with a disposable, lint-free paper towel product or gauze. I usually dress the microdermals with a Tegaderm bandage after the procedure and provide two extra pieces for the clients to apply before sleep for the following two nights. PROCEDURE ON IAM:CURSETHISMETALBODY BY IAM:MUTE-ONE    How robust are they? Do they hold up well to sleeping on them, impacts, bead changes, and stuff like that? STEVE Their relatively small size compared to transdermals, and some surface piercings, caused me to worry initially about how they would hold up to impacts and stress. So far, the wearers haven’t encountered any large amounts of stress on them, and I haven’t heard of it being a problem from my friends who install them. The bead changes I’ve done have been very simple and caused no irritation. BRYAN I’ve only snagged mine on clothes a few times, and it’s still in there! You need to be really gentle when changing the ends on them — it feels like you are going to pull it out. I’ve seen a few pictures of people who pulled them out while changing the ends on them. JLO Obviously, the longer they are healed, the more they can handle. After the body really grabs them they are quite resilient, but since they are so small, a good snag has the potential to rip them right out. One of my customers had to change her bedding completely because of the lace that constantly found a way to wrap around the disk! The ones I have on my temples get banged and pulled daily by my one year old daughter. I’ve had them for about five months and I don’t even pay attention anymore. No pain, and no problems at all. BRIAN I don’t think microdermals, with the most recent jewelry designs, have been around long enough to know. I’ve done end changes with no problems, but as far as impact resistance, I still think a transdermal implant will be more stable — but a surface bar less. JOHN For how small the are, they are very robust. I’ve done a couple on wrists, which are notorious for giving surface piercings problems… yet these microdermals seem to be holding up fine. The initial healing nub can get knocked around a bit, especially while sleeping, but it doesn’t seem to cause long term damage like it does for many piercings. LEFT: LOWER NAVEL BY BRIAN DECKER, RIGHT: CLEAVAGE BY WIZZER    How did you learn to do them? DIDIER I started with myself, and other piercers and counter staff. After a few months I contacted most of my regular clients and offered the service in exchange for information on the anchors. STEVE I took the time to think about the procedure, and talked to a couple friends who had done them before attempting one. Leo Ziebol told me his procedure and I adopted it. JLO I have great guinea pigs working the counter at Slave to the Needle — these people let me do anything to them if it’s free. LOL. JOHN I talked with a few practitioners that had already installed them. I found out what methods they were using, and what drawbacks they had come across from them. I had a lengthy talk with Tom Brazda about them at APP 2006, before I even knew they would be so readily available. After talking to so many practitioners that I respect and getting their input, and since I had been using the punch and taper method for so long, I was confident in my ability installing these pieces. BRYAN Just common sense and asking other piercers some questions. BRIAN Yes, nothing more than common sense and second nature, I think. I’ve been doing implants and punch and elevate surface style piercing long enough that it just made complete sense right away.    Are any skills on top of “good piercer” required to install a microdermal? DIDIER I think most skills can be applied from piercing. In my experience, the motion of the needle is like a “dip” when doing a surface piercing. The finger position is a little different, but varies depending on how difficult it is to pinch the tissue. BRIAN With the method of insertion I use, a good understanding of measuring and feeling for tissue depth is important. Otherwise the piece may not sit fully in the subcutaneous layer, and may pull an end piece down under the skin if placed too deeply, or facilitate rejection if done too shallowly. Anyone who understands punch and elevate surface technique should have no problem with these. JLO Being able to read the grain of the skin and visualizing the jewelry in the tissue helps a lot. STEVE I think any artist that devotes an appropriate amount time and effort into researching microdermals is capable of doing them. This means someone who knows how to install them with minimal trauma, what qualifies as appropriate placement and use, a good base of knowledge and experience regarding aftercare, a sense of preparation in case something goes wrong during the procedure or during healing, knowledge on their removal, knowledge on sterile procedures and cross-contamination, care for the wearer, and good intentions. JOHN Being a good piercer is a start. Having some experience in elevating the skin for surface piercings would help — that can be from punch and elevate or from pierce and elevate methods. Knowing how the skin elevates and separates makes it easier to grasp installing these. Confidence in yourself is important, but without arrogance — knowing when you’re not ready, and having the morals, ethics, and responsibility to admit it is important, and unfortunately that is something a lot of people in our industry don’t seem to understand. IME I found it to be really simple. PAT Here’s the scary part — with the finesse of the design, you don’t even have to be a good piercer to install these! LEFT: TWO WEEKS OLD BY KEYLAN LEVINE (IAM:XKEYX), RIGHT: BY JOHN JOYCE    What advice would you have to other piercers who would like to start doing this procedure? BRYAN After some research, practise on yourself first — or at least on a really trusting friend. PAT Like with everything watch, learn, and do research here on BME… or practise on friends and family. These are so simple to install — it’s pretty amazing. But I’m not gonna be offering the jewelry to just anyone. Due to the number of hacks out there that are willing to do anything to make a buck, I’m keeping my clientele to a very short list. JLO They’re easy enough. All you need to do is do them in your mind first. The not-so-obvious problems seem to show themselves that way. Then be ready to improvise when you actually attempt them. If they don’t sit right, don’t be afraid to remove them the next day and massage the skin and immediately reinsert them. Play with them a little and you’ll find a technique that works for you. Sky Renfro (from propiercing.com) is working on setting up a class too! That’ll be so awesome to experience other piercers’ techniques as well! DIDIER I would suggest video taping what you are doing, and taking your time. Do a dozen in four months — not in four days. Watch your video and learn from your successes, as well as your failures. And if you take your time, your success rate will be higher. BRIAN Even if piercers are seasoned and have no problems with getting the pieces into the skin, they should limit them to clients who understand they will be difficult, and most likely painful, to remove. STEVE There are lots of very talented and friendly artists doing these procedures — talk to them and make sure you feel comfortable with every step of the procedure before attempting it. Understand everything from the purchasing of the jewelry, proper sterilization and installation, and long-term aftercare, and its possible removal. JOHN Ask for help. Ask someone you respect that you know has done these — find out how they did it. If you live near someone doing them, ask to watch them do one. Hell, ask them to do one on you! Then you get a firsthand experience of how they are done, and how they heal. This is all knowledge you can share with your clients. PAT The long-term degree of adherence of the microdermal to the underlying tissue is still unknown… Noah has the longest running microdermal of mine to date at six months. I have a feeling with the microdermal being implant grade titanium, these may have to be cut out and away from the tissue that bonds to the titanium. People should consider them permanent as long as healing and removal information on fully healed microdermals — one year plus — remains unknown. IME Look around as see what other people are doing. This is a newer item and a lot of people are doing different things — try and check them all out.    What advice would you have to clients looking to have one of these done that isn’t already a friend or regular of a piercer doing them? DIDIER If your regular piercer can’t do the procedure, ask for a referral. Do your homework — like for any other piercing. STEVE Make sure you feel safe and informed on the procedure. Also, these particular pieces are new inventions in our industry and we are still learning about them — keep that in mind. JOHN While they seem to be working our really well, their success can’t be guaranteed. Along the same lines though, no piercing can really be guaranteed… JLO Until anchors have been around for four or five years I think we must think of them as being in a trial phase. BRYAN I probably wouldn’t do one on a client — maybe on another piercer who knew the risks and such, but these things are still too new for me to be doing them on customers. Besides, removal will require some cuts… BRIAN Clients need to know these pieces are borderline permanent, with respect to ease of removal. JOHN Research it, and research the artist doing it — research everything. Make sure you want it and consider it a permanent choice. I know these aren’t as “permanent” as transdermals, but they are more permanent than your standard piercing. Even if the microdermal isn’t permanent, any scars left behind from it (or any piercing) can be. LEFT: TEMPLE BY KEYLAN LEVINE (IAM:XKEYX), RIGHT: SELF DONE BY BRYAN    Does the design of the microdermal still need refinement, or do you consider the current design “mature”? JOHN It’s still new and in its testing phase as far as I’m concerned. PAT My original design had a lot of time and thought into it. Aside from the variables (number of holes and post length) there isn’t much room to improve upon. That said, I am working on some finer points to the microdermal that I’ll discuss and debut at a later date. DIDIER I can’t see what I would do different with the design. Anything to make the anchor less likely to reject or pull out would make it more difficult to insert or remove — I’ve been told that Industrial Strength is also working on different variations of the anchors. STEVE I’ve only had experience with one model of microdermal, and I thought it was very appropriate for its usage — but I won’t be surprised if we see better models out as the popularity of this jewelry rises. BRIAN For ease of insertion, I can’t think of a shape that would work better right now, but perhaps a design that doesn’t have permanent anchoring of skin through the jewelry would be a good idea. If the main section of the base looked more like a tuning fork with two “legs” rather than holes, the piece would still be able to anchor as scar tissue would build up in the gap, but removal would be much simpler. WIZZER I feel the Industrial Strength microdermals work really well — the only issue I have is the removal. With the healed microdermals, a small incision is needed to lift the “heel” of the jewelry out of the tissue. I’ve been using #11 scalpel to make this relief cut, but I’ve also heard of some practitioners using the side of a piercing needle. The other problem with the Industrial Strength microdermals is the rise on the base — all of which come in 3/32”, which I found a bit long for facial work. JOHN I’d like to be able to get the rise in a slightly longer length. I think in some areas an 1/8” rise is a better choice — being able to choose between the two would be great. WIZZER The prototypes I’m using now (made by IME of Integrity Body Jewelry) are available with as small as 3/64” rises, and in sizes ranging from 14 gauge to 10 gauge which work really well. This design also eliminates that “heel” which is found on the Industrial Strength microdermals and provides for a smoother insertion with a less invasive removal if removal is needed. IME I personally think that there is very little in the world that couldn’t use some refinement. Microdermals are no exception — just about everything can be improved on. JLO I am very happy with the Industrial Strength design — it’s certainly working well. I think Integrity’s design will probably work better in certain areas. IME is prototyping them, so we’ll have to wait and see. LEFT: FOOT BY DIDIER, RIGHT: FINGERS BY KEYLAN LEVINE (IAM:XKEYX)    Do you think this has the potential to become a common or popular procedure? JLO Oh yes, I foresee them being as popular as nostril piercings at least. BRYAN They look awesome — I can see them being very popular! But I don’t feel that piercers should offer them to every customer that walks in the door — I don’t think the average customer is ready for something like this. DIDIER We’ve been trying to take our time working with these to assure they will be safe and effective for our industry. Things are just going so well with these that I see them being mainstream — even more than the surface bar. I see it staying as part of our list of standard procedures. IME I think so, for sure. It looks good on paper so far, but, it is a new thing — it’s going to take some time to see if they hold up. Personally I am very sceptical-slash-excited — as a piercer I’m just always making sure that what I’m doing is 100%, and a large part of that is the longevity of the end result. STEVE Microdermals definitely have the potential to become a popular procedure. I see more and more every day, but as their popularity rises I do fear low quality companies will start manufacturing shoddy representations of them without considerations for their usage. This has happened with virtually every type of jewelry so far, so I cannot imagine microdermals being exempt from it. Hand in hand, as they become more popular there will be a demand for low-cost procedures that might contribute to inexperienced — or uncaring — artists attempting them. Again, this has been true with virtually every new procedure we’ve seen. It seems inevitable, so I would urge everyone to make sure they feel comfortable and informed before allowing an artist to work on them — as you should with any procedure. PAT Yes, as you can clearly see, it will be popular. A week and a half from its debut at APP to a handful of people, Industrial Strength knocked off my design purely for the money and profit involved — they made insignificant changes, but, still, it was based on my original design. I was trying to test these out in a controlled fashion, put several out, get feedback, refine the design, do another test, and see if there are any issues with healing… But then Industrial Strength took this and ran straight into production, offering them to the masses, with no research, no development, and no testing. Because of this, several piercers are installing microdermals on a daily basis, making them commonplace, just like navel piercings. I guess time will tell on this. …but, yes, these will be the “next big thing,” if they already aren’t already. JOHN Commonplace, yeah, sure… popular, eh, I don’t know… It’s not going to be the next navel or nostril, but it may be the next surface piercing!    Anything else you’d like to add? DIDIER This is the first new anything to come along for piercing in a long while. More information will be available soon. I’ve been ask to sit on a panel on Anchoring for APP 2007, and look for a class through Professional Piercing Systems as well. JOHN I just want to thank Pat and JD for pushing boundaries and working on this design. IME Pat Pruitt of Custom Steel was the first person to start making these things and I feel that he has received very little credit this year. We as a community of jewelry makers in my opinion come up with all kinds of different things to make, and rarely do we get things like patents, seemingly leaving it to the “goodwill” of the rest of the community to not steal our designs — or start making something that is so similar to the original design that it looks like nothing but theft. PAT Aside from my personal soreness with a Custom Steel original being knocked off in record time, I think a word of warning should be sent out. That would be the long term applications of installing microdermals. Let’s not fool ourselves… this is an implant!!! This is not a piece of jewelry. I feel that removal down the road is still an unknown, and with the ease of insertion any Joe Hack piercer can install these… but removal on the other hand will require some skill. Shannon Larratt BME.com

BME.COM 2005 Year End Awards Thanks for another great year! With your help, BME continues to go strong as it enters its twelfth year. In this wrap-up article, I’d like to thank a few specific people who helped BME grow in 2005. These lists are just the best of best (or the biggest of the best if you’d like) — thanks must also go out to the thousands and thousands of people who made smaller but still important contributions, to say nothing of the paying members and BMEshop customers who make it possible to keep the servers online. In 2005, BME received about 60 gigabytes of image submissions totaling approximately 300,000 files. Of those, 188,485 images met our standards and were posted to the site. These successful image submissions came from 24,257 people and were posted in 151 separate updates. Along with those pictures, 7,234 stories and articles were posted and reviewed by site members, and 4,803 articles were posted to the BME newsfeed — almost all by volunteers. Overall top image contributors The competition was fierce this year and the numbers are quite staggering. BME/HARD members were competing with both professional piercers and with event photographers for the top spot. Below are the winners for the overall top image contributor of the year: 1. 4,171 images Big Rick

2. 4,159 images stained steel

3. 3,733 images


kokomi.3k
4. 3,242 images


KitanoKaryuudo

5. 2,044 images


RussFoxx

6. 1,990 images


perk900
7. 1,523


vampy

8. 1,354


VEAL

9. 1,353


Allen Falkner

10. 1,229


peo52

11. 1,150


hypermike

12. 909


stainless
13. 872


dispel

14. 859


Lexci Million

15. 848


KIVAKA

16. 833


Urban Soul

17. 832


Joao Caldara

18. 824


bena
19. 762


jonathanpiercing

20. 712


Hornet

21. 708


giselle

22. 653


bastard

23. 612


Ars Bonus Gallery

24. 607


wildirishrose
25. 559


joker

26. 510


UREA

27. 507


freakypumper

28. 504


j_scarab

29. 501


Rings of Pleasure

30. 489


Anonymous
31. 475


Anonymous

32. 468


nobcatz

33. 450


Guerella

34. 441


Crazy Glamour

35. 434


RAFAEL

36. 431


Efix
37. 411


rwethereyet

38. 406


deb

39. 397


HeadlessLego

40. 391


mc4bbs

41. 384


Vex Hecubus

42. 354


holey13
43. 353


matt bruce

44. 336


Bea und Lehni

45. 326


Tranquility

46. 325


holierthanthou

47. 320


piercer_dave

48. 313


rollsplitt

Top image contributors per month

And let’s break it down by month as well:

January 1. vampy (871 images) 2. Big Rick (520 images) 3. matt bruce (216 images) 4. KIVAKA (210 images) 5. kokomi.3k (171 images)

February


1. VEAL (241 images)
2. Big Rick (232 images)
3. KIVAKA (173 images)
4. 667 (170 images)
5. Anonymous (137 images)

March


1. stained steel (276 images)
2. Big Rick (240 images)
3. kokomi.3k (174 images)
4. Anonymous (144 images)
5. Crumbs (132 images)

April


1. stained steel (1,268 images)
2. Allen Falkner (796 images)
3. kokomi.3k (337 images)
4. KitanoKaryuudo (318 images)
5. bastard (251 images) May


1. hypermike (486 images)
2. stained steel (448 images)
3. kokomi.3k (419 images)
4. KitanoKaryuudo (271 images)
5. rollsplitt (201 images)

June


1/2. Big Rick (448 images)
1/2. stained steel (448 images)
3. kokomi.3k (419 images)
4. gastaum (221 images)
5. KitanoKaryuudo (191 images)

July


1. Big Rick (1,346 images)
2. perk900 (707 images)
3. RussFoxx (685 images)
4. KitanoKaryuudo (615 images)
5. Anonymous (454 images)

August


1. kokomi.3k (916 images)
2. Allen Falkner (553 images)
3. giselle (397 images)
4. dispel (356 images)
5. vampy (276 images) September


1. stained steel (954 images)
2. Big Rick (436 images)
3. RussFoxx (348 images)
4. Anonymous (309 images)
5. dispel (256 images)
October


1. Big Rick (704 images)
2. kokomi.3k (412 images)
3. KitanoKaryuudo (322 images)
4. deb (277 images)
5. Crazy Glamour (160 images)
November


1. KitanoKaryuudo (767 images)
2. RussFoxx (580 images)
3. bena (488 images)
4. Anonymous (404 images)
5. mc4bbs (282 images)
December


1. stained steel (823 images)
2. kokomi.3k (624 images)
3. KitanoKaryuudo (433 images)
4. VEAL (304 images)
5. wildirishrose (243 images)

Top image contributors per section

To make it more fair, I’ve also broken down the winners per section. Most of the names are still familiar, but this also shows you some of the niche contributors who helped keep some of the more difficult sections alive:

Tattoos 1. Big Rick (3,528 images) 2. bastard (629 images) 3. j_scarab (260 images) 4. babakhin (186 images) 5. Efix (158 images) 6. Anonymous (152 images) 7. RAFAEL (150 images)

Piercing


1. stained steel (1,464 images)
2. KIVAKA (675 images)
3. Lexci Million (337 images)
4. piercer_dave (214 images)
5. holey13 (199 images)
6. holierthanthou (199 images)
7. alienboy (150 images)

Scarification


1. perk900 (433 images)
2. hypermike (360 images)
3. Joao_Caldara (318 images)
4. matt bruce (294 images)
5. stained steel (204 images)
6. UREA (152 images)
7. vampy (144 images)

Ritual


1. stained steel (2,090 images)
2. RussFoxx (1,930 images)
3. Allen Falkner (1,347 images)
4. vampy (1,115 images)
5. bena (718 images)
6. stainless (663 images)
7. dispel (661 images) Culture


1. perk900 (1,145 images)
2. Big Rick (643 images)
3. newaddict (257 images)
4. spot (197 images)
5. Allen Falkner (176 images)
6. Lexci Million (169 images)
7. B-boy (162 images)
BME/extreme


1. jonathanpiercing (511 images)
2. mc4bbs (391 images)
3. emilio gonzalez (214 images)
4. old soldier (173 images)
5. stardust99 (165 images)
6. Anonymous (141 images)
7. Anonymous (124 images)
BME/HARD


1. kokomi.3k (3,733 images)
2. KitanoKaryuudo (3,218 images)
3. VEAL (1,264 images)
4. peo52 (1,229 images)
5. Hornet (712 images)
6. Urban Soul Bonus Gallery (692 images)
7. Ars Bonus Gallery (612 images)

 

Most diverse image contributors

While some contributors tended to submit in just a few categories of BME, other people submitted to many different galleries (piercers especially). In 2005, 739 galleries were updated at some point during the year. The following people deserve recognition for having an active involvement in a wide range of activities covered on BME:

1. stained steel (71) 2. holey13 (62) 3. KIVAKA (55) 4. Lexci Million (55) 5. Efix (50)

6. j_scarab (50) 7. alienboy (47) 8. babakhin (43) 9. holierthanthou (42) 10. redneckzombi (42)

11. HollywoodPiercer (42)
12. el tio pincho (40)
13. Joao_Caldara (39)
14. bob-omb (39)
15. RAFAEL (38)

Most consistent image contributors

Some people submitted only occasionally but in large numbers — for example, folks who documented conventions and events. Others contributed on a more constant basis, meaning that any given update was likely to have an image from them. Of the 151 separate updates posted to BME in 2005, the following people were represented in the largest number of them:

1. KIVAKA (61)
2. Lexci Million (60)
3. j_scarab (55)
4. alienboy (51)
5. Joao_Caldara (45)

Top experience authors

I was blown away by the number of articles some people wrote this year, with the top place being a tie of a story submitted on average every twelve and a half days for the entire year! Here are the top authors of 2005:

#1. 29 stories kyo		#1. 29 stories cuthalcoven		#3. 21 stories aniorange
BlueStar (18)

psychonautje (15)

Lozza_mc (15)

\wolfbane (15)

Skip3s (14)

Paindreamer (14)

hunterjackson (12)


Anonymous (11)


Ebowlotus1960 (11)


WarMaiden (11)


Anonymous (11)


Flutterfly (11)

Honorable mentions (10 experiences): gothicphoenixx, d’Latta, and Orilind.

Top experience reviewers

When experiences are posted they first have to move through a moderation process whereby members of the site determine what should be posted and what needs to be sent back for revision first. Of the 7,526 experiences that were posted, the following list shows which reviewers were successfully involved in getting those ones posted (so this doesn’t include the experiences that were rejected):

1. Ebowlotus1960 (3,387)
2. deadly pale (2,759)
3. cuthalcoven (2,618)
4. Frisky_Vixen666 (2,608)
5. dressxupxdollie (2,442)
6. Yknits2001 (2,374)
7. Skip3s (2,159)

Top BME newsfeed contributors

BME’s newsfeed is maintained by a small team of volunteers (anyone can submit stories) who troll news sites finding any articles that might be of body modification interest to readers of BME. The following people posted the greatest number of stories to the newsfeed:

1. rebekah (2,337)
2. Ebowlotus1960 (881)
3. CajunChefClay (392)
4. piercedjenny (336)
5. Frisky_Vixen666 (334)

BME/News Interns and Staff

In 2005, BME brought on two interns to develop content for BME/News. Much thanks to them for their hard work and articles, and good luck on their future ventures, writing and otherwise:

snackninja Read all of Jordan’s articles

typealice Read all of Gillian’s articles

In addition, the following people maintained a column in 2005 on BME:

The Lizardman

Jim Ward

FREE

Fakir Musafar

Princess_Poop

QOD Staff

As it has for years now, BME’s QOD staff tireless answers body modification questions from the public. Here are the members who posted regularly over 2005:

MONTE

Gary

shawn.spc

spikesandstuds

amorphous

LexTalonis


vampy


The Fog


j_scarab


Lassi

BMEshop

BMEshop is a small family business that runs independently from (but is still partnered to) BME. Here’s who makes sure that your BME swag and body modification gear gets to you quickly and at a fair price:

badseeds

tcie

BME Core Staff and Volunteers

And, of course, BME’s core staff of volunteers and employees:

badur Badur’s done a wide range of things for us including being held hostage by a hostile ISP!

CT
CT helps with server maintenance, especially with our IIS servers.

PhilipBarbosa
Phil does much of the day-to-day image processing.

1101001
Jon maintains and administers many of our UNIX servers and also does development work.

dita
Dita runs BMEjapan.com


Jen
Jen handles customer support email and manages the experience moderation system.


Rachel
Rachel runs the business and financial end of BME and also does server maintenance, installation, contracting, moving, and more.

glider
That’s me, Shannon!

I have almost certainly forgotten people from this list, and for that I apologize! I’ve also I’ve left off related projects like wlfdrgn‘s IAM scholarship, Shawn Porter‘s SPC, and Crow‘s Modified Mind, folks that contribute to ModBlog, that all deserve their own credit as wel.

But what did they win?

Everyone you saw mentioned on this page gets a limited edition 2006 BME staff shirt (in whatever color they’d like). The design is based on military unit shirts for those of you who don’t have family in the armed forces, and the latin on the front says “free will”. Anyway, if you see someone wearing one of these, you can bet that they made significant contributions to BME (or perhaps robbed someone who did), and thus influenced the future of the body modification community with their input (thus “PROPHET”) on the back.

But wait — there’s more! You know I love making t-shirts, so instead of just one staff shirt design for 2006, I’ve made two for winners to choose from. If they appear on this page once, they can choose one of the two shirts, and if they appear more than once, they get both. Shirt number two (available in any color but black or white) is a picture of BME’s pinup of the year, Eva (KitanoKaryuudo) — click here for a closeup:

In addition, the top five image contributors won $100 gift certificates to BMEshop, as did the top three experience authors. Oh, and everyone here got free access for a year (not that they need it since they contribute so often). I wish I could give out more prizes!

Thanks again everyone for a great year. Big things are in store in 2006 on a lot of levels; a new content management system, a rewrite of IAM, some new sociopolitical projects, tons and tons of free stickers, and more. I think you’ll like what’s coming…

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

2004 Year-End Awards “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” – Special Olympics Motto For the past few years (2002, 2003) I’ve cataloged the top contributors every year. I don’t know if it’s related, but every year since doing that the number of contributions from the top people has escalated — it was absolutely staggering just how much some people helped out. This article recognizes those people who went above and beyond in contributions to BME, as well as giving public thanks to the many “pseudostaff” members that actually keep the site alive and running… and as I finish up this article, I already have thousands of submissions in my queue for the 2005 awards. Let me begin by showing you what the people on this page got for their work (other than warm feelings of course, but that won’t keep you clothed). One of the prizes for making it to the list of people in this article is that you get a staff shirt. These staff shirts are utterly unavailable in any other way and are never reprinted or offered for sale. So if you see someone wearing one, they’re someone you can say “thanks” to (either that or they killed someone you can say thanks to and stole their clothes). The shirt is meant to be reminiscent of a classic sacred heart, although in truth, like most things on BME, the reality is much dirtier. If you won one, if anyone asks, I’m sure you can concoct your own “if you don’t know, you don’t want to know” answer, but in truth it’s a rendering of the amazing Enpassant’s heavily modified (and in this case saline inflated) genitals that appeared on the cover of BME. You can visit his BME/HARD gallery as well if you’d like. If you are on the list of people on this page, you should have received a message on IAM and via email explaining how to get your shirt (and possibly other prizes). If you didn’t, drop me a line ASAP to make sure your shirt is in the print run! And now on with the awards!     Experience Review Team 2004 saw 9,081 new articles and experiences posted to BME. Before being added to the site they are moderated (reviewed) by a panel of IAM members — they read everything that’s submitted, and then decided which should make it to the site. A total of 1,386 individual IAM members took part in the review system, but the following reviewers approved the most number of experiences to the site in 2004 (this doesn’t include the ones they rejected). Note: Links go to IAM pages and/or BME/HARD galleries as relevant. IAM:Don Don, rather appropriately a librarian from Coventry, UK, does much of the running of the experience review system for me. With 2,666 experiences personally approved this year he’s reviewed almost a third of all experiences added. IAM:BlueStar BlueStar, a twenty year old Photonics Engineering student from Niagara Falls, Canada approved 2,348 experiences this year. IAM:deadly pale Deadly Pale’s 1,917 approvals this year put Poland on the top-three map as well, so you won’t be hearing any “but you forgot about Poland” coming from BME’s competitors.

IAM:Cerra Cerra is in the #4 spot, representing Halifax, Nova Scotia with 1,631 approvals.

IAM:xPurifiedx Rounding out the top five with 1,525 approvals is Buffalo, New York’s xPurifiedx.

IAM:rebekah Rebekah (who’s also the queen of the BME newsfeed) places sixth with 1,497 approvals.

IAM:purrtykitty4m Just squeezing past a thousand is New Orleans’ Purrtykitty4m with 1,046 approval reviews.

IAM:drip With 1,010 reviewed stories posted this year, Drip ensures that iam:Christian is well represented in spot number eight.

The folks above are all in the “over a thousand” club in terms of successful positive reviews for the year. Below are the runners up (who also deserve a lot of thanks for their help) — each of them reviewed over five hundred approved experiences this year:

der_narr (903) The Stolen Child (891) WasabiTurtle (694) instigator (679)

Fuzzybeast (635) seahorse girl (613) Bear151556 (551) Uberkitty (539)

Shit Disturber (520) Doldrums (509) cuthalcoven (505)

Top Experience Authors

Those 9,081 experiences had 7,277 distinct authors, many of whom wrote more than one story. The top BME authors of the year 2004 in terms of number of stories written were:

IAM:Uberkitty Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Uberkitty wrote a truly staggering thirty one experiences for BME in 2004. That’s more than one every two weeks! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	IAM:Dawnie Dawnie, a charming (and kind of pervy) Southern Belle, is responsible for a total of twenty five experiences, many in BME/HARD, putting her in second place. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25	IAM:BlueStar Rounding out third with an incredible twenty two stories is BlueStar, who’s also a medal-ranked winner on the review team. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

IAM:der_narr With seventeen stories written this year, Duisburg, Germany’s der_narr ties for fourth place. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

IAM:mythernal Also with seventeen stories this year and tying for fourth place is Michigan pagan Mythernal. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

IAM:purrtykitty4m Placing fifth with a still impressive sixteen stories written this year, Purrtykitty4m ranks as both a top writer and top reviewer on BME. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

IAM:cuthalcoven Placing sixth with fourteen stories in 2004 (plus an interview she did with her mother) is Toledo’s Cuthalcoven. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

IAM:porcelina Ranking lucky number seven is Porcelina from Perth, Australia. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

The runners up for top experiences are as follows (many are tied, thus the repeating numbers):

8. Flutterfly (11 stories) 8. KoLdFroNt (11) 8. Cerra (11) 9. hunterjackson (10)

9. The Stolen Child (10) 9. Marsdweller (10) 9. rwethereyet (10) 9. DirtyPrettyThings (10)

10. JuanKi (9) 11. Orilind (8) 11. Asurfael (8) 11. SadisticSarah (8) 11. Shamus Greenman (8)

Top Image Submitters
Warning: This part of the article contains some
adult photos!

This is where things really get crazy! Of course the largest section of the site is the image galleries; this year 130,319 pictures were added by a total of 14,668 separate people. The top submitters donated truly staggering quantities of images, and competition was tight and fierce. Skipping over Kokomi’s almost ludicrous quantity, the next three were separated by only fifty images! The top BME image submitters of 2004 are:

Kokomi Writing anonymously from Germany, Kokomi has this year submitted 3,170 new images to his popular bonus gallery in BME/HARD — and he’s ranked every year we’ve tracked submissions!	IAM:rwethereyet Not only did Walkerton’s rwethereyet submit 1,881 images to both his bonus gallery and other parts of BME, but he also designed a BME shirt based on his interests!	IAM:KIVAKA A generous person and talented piercer, as the number three image submitter and the top piercer for 2004, Kivaka represents Lockport, IL’s Tattoo City. 1,844 images have been added by him this year.

IAM:MWM416 With 1,828 Marty came so close to the top three, and were it not for being fired for refusing to pierce a minor, he’d be there. He currently pierces at Worcester, MA’s Piercing Emporium.	Bea & Lehni With 1,368 new pictures added to their gallery, these kinky German swingers stay quite popular!	IAM:nobcatz Perhaps tired from submitting well over two thousand images last year (he was the top contributor of 2003), with 1,366 pictures in 2004, Japan’s Nobcatz again ranks among BME’s most prolific photographers.	IAM:HeadlessLego With both a popular bonus gallery and images in nearly all sections of the site, Andie has sent us 1,288 photos this year.	IAM:Efix With 1,277 photos this year both in his ritual gallery, his scarification gallery, and across the site as a piercer, D-Markation, Quebec City’s Efix is eighth on our list of contributors and the third piercer on the list.
IAM:dispel With 1,227 photos this year, this UK photographer (watch out for him at conventions!) has extensively documented BE and Vampy’s work.	Ars Having added 1,124 to his creative bonus gallery in BME/HARD, Ars rounds out tenth place on our contributor’s list.	IAM:perk900 Always gonzo, Philadelphia’s Perk900 has added 1,084 pictures to BME this year, the last on our list to crack a thousand.	WenchyBev & Neil With 933 new pictures resurrecting their gallery in 2004, WenchyBev and Neil’s bonus gallery in BME/HARD continues to grow.	IAM:dsw At the core of Brasil’s +3 suspension team, dsw has contributed 821 pictures over 2004.
IAM:x31337x Photographer x31337x has contributed 784 images this year, many of them documenting Rites of Passage.	IAM:Cerra The only person to be a ranking experience reviewer, top writer, and image contributor for 2004, Cerra added 821 images.	UrbanSoul My kinky friend UrbanSoul from Italy has added 671 new pictures to his BME/HARD bonus gallery this year.	IAM:Asurfael Scandinavia’s Asurfael has contributed 670 image in 2004, injecting some much needed rock’n’roll into BME/HARD via her bonus gallery.	IAM:VEAL The naughtiest housewife I know, VEAL has added 652 images to her bonus gallery and elsewhere in 2004..

The runners up for top image submitter were as follow:

Codezero (644 pictures) jonathanpiercing (640) AlmightyStudios (629) MontanaPiercer (623) Joao_Malabares (587) lilfunky1 (552) stainless (551) j_scarab (540) Cenobitez (536) shadow (523)

babakhin (505) (anonymous) (490) glider (467) Kirsten (451) Vex Hecubus (427) theSearcher (422) MiZ C (413) inksation (412) Alcan (387) hypermike (379) vampy (379)

Big Rick (362) Sicklove (360) Foxx (341) LargeGauge (331) mac13mac13 (318) brian (303) ScabBoy (285) PiercedPuff (283) peco (281) la negra (279) luvpain99 (269)

BME/News Team

BME/News is one of my favorite sections of BME. It includes a number of columns and articles from the top body modification writers (and doers) around the world, as well as a newsfeed which tracks articles in the mainstream news that are of particular relevance to BME readers. Below are some of the people who more actively made BME/News possible in 2004.

The Lizardman The incredible, amazing Lizardman, Erik Sprague, writes both a monthly column for BME and a regular “ask the Lizardman” Q&A. Visit him on IAM or at his website for more on his adventures (and his tour schedule)	Jim Ward Jim Ward, founder of both the world’s first piercing studio and piercing magazine, documents that history in his fascinating Running the Gauntlet. Visit him at Gauntlet Enterprises.	/> Fakir Musafar I’m deeply honored to have the legendary Fakir Musafar, who should need little introduction, writing for BME. Visit him at BodyPlay.com to learn more about his many other projects.
(The late) Cora Birk You feared him as yttrx and then cried with him as he transitioned to a woman under the name Cora Birk. This gender swap, documented in his Shapeshift column, was ultimately cut short as he became Jamix. Stay tuned?	Marisa Kakoulas Marisa’s new column Legal Link addresses legal issues for the modified community, and is a companion to her upcoming book on tattoo law. And yes, she’s a real NYC lawyer, so don’t mess with her.	IAM:rebekah While other people help as well, Rebekah’s contribution of 2,256 stories to the BME Newsfeed were absolutely essential in keeping it running (and put her nearly two thousand stories ahead of any other person).

QOD Staff

BME’s “question of the day” service remains hugely popular, having been asked thousands of questions over the last year. Not including me, the following staff members helped out this year by each answering over two hundred questions a piece from readers:

IAM:Vampy This years most prolific QOD answering, slightly exceeding “of the day” with 387 answers in 2004, performance and body artist Vampy is currently best known for her work with UK suspension team Body Evolution.

IAM:Lori St. Leone One of BME’s many expats, Alaskan Lori St. Leone owns Darwin, Australia’s Vogue Body Piercing. She’s answered 375 questions for BME readers (and her fans) this year.

IAM:Derek Lowe Derek Lowe, APP piercer at Saint Sabrina’s in Minneapolis masculinizes our top three by answering 238 QODs in 2004.

Additional work was done by Gary, Sean Philips, Monte, Shawn Porter, Rachel Larratt, Phish, and Ryan Worden.

Other BME Staff

Finally, the people below are some of the core individuals who kept BME running in 2004.

IAM:>glider Hey, it’s me! I think you know what I do already, right?	IAM:Rachel My beautiful and brilliant wife Rachel writes and photographs for BME, handles all of our finances, and is the publisher of her own magazine LOOSE.	IAM:Jen Jen handles all of BME’s online customer support, out of a cold, cold office in the Maritimes.
IAM:CT Apparently having forgiven me for endangering his wedding ceremony, Mike takes care of many of the emergency technical issues on BME and IAM and helps keep everything online (either that or he’s planning the greatest revenge of all time).	IAM:Dita For years now Dita has worked hard to maintain the BME Japan portal and has brought BME to hundreds of thousands of new readers through it.	IAM:1101001 Jon has written (and maintains) many of the software tools on BME like the link engine and iam.crush2. He’s also one of the core forces behind Fishing Fury.
IAM:Badseeds Ryan and Corrie Worden run BMEshop start to finish. I don’t know if that makes them “staff” or not, but they deserve to be here!	IAM:Vanilla Not quite so “vanilla” in real life, Danielle not only provided essential help on IAM management in 2004, but she also maintains the wonderful IAM:INFO help site.	IAM:badur Hailing from exotic Madagascar, Toronto designer Badur is responsible for the better looking parts of BME’s look, was half of the BME Road Trip, co-organized BMEFEST 2004, and more.

There are a lot of people I’ve missed I’m sure (and if you think I missed you and you want
your shirt, don’t be afraid to write me — I’m talking to you, Blake, co-organizer of BMEFEST 2004).
You’ve seen the numbers though — you know that this is only the tip of the iceberg when
it comes to BME’s nebulous staff of hundreds of thousands of contributors around the world. I
wish I could thank every one of those people here, but clearly that’s not possible. However,
BME stands as a legacy to their efforts, and everyone who’s helped make it happen deserves
thanks.

See you in 2005!

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Punch and Taper Surface Piercing “Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope.” – Albert Camus GLOSSARY Since this article contains terms that not all readers may be familiar with; here are a few quick definitions to help you, and there are many more in the BME/encyclopedia. Surface Bar (“Staple Bar”): A surface bar is a barbell that’s quite literally shaped like a staple. Its goal is to place as little pressure on surrounding tissue as possible, thus its unusual shape. Tygon: Tygon is an inert and extremely flexible plastic tubing. Instead of attempting to find the “perfect shape” as a surface bar does, Tygon works by being flexible enough to just “go wherever your body wants it to”. Dermal Punch (“Biopsy Punch”): A dermal punch is a cylindrical blade that doctors use to remove tissue samples for biopsies. It is also used by piercers for large gauge piercing work and of course the technique discussed in this article. Drop Down Threading (also Step Down Threading): This is a form of externally threaded jewelry where the threaded section has a smaller diameter than the main rod, thus minimizing irritation if it’s drawn through a piercing. It’s rare these days to see new innovations in the field of body piercing. It’s been almost a decade since piercers like Jon Cobb, Tom Brazda, and Steve Haworth pioneered procedures like the surface bar, pocketing, and the transscrotal, and while things have certainly been improved and fine-tuned since then, not a lot has changed when it comes down to it. However, over the past few years, a number of artists have been working out a new method of surface piercing which promises even better results than are possible using traditionally placed surface bars. This new procedure is called “punch and taper” or “transdermally implanted” surface piercing. It is similar to surface bar piercing, and in fact uses surface bars as jewelry most of the time, but in an effort to reduce trauma and pressure (and thus migration) the entry and exit points are formed with a dermal punch and the “tunnel” for the jewelry is formed with a taper or elevator. The end result is a surface piercing that heals faster and has a far greater survivability rate than a standard clamp and needle type procedure. I recently had a chance to talk to three piercers, each that can make the claim of having independently invented this method. They were kind enough to talk to me both about the procedure itself and the development that went into creating it, giving a rare insight to the technical “craft” element of body piercing as it advances. Before we begin I’d like to introduce them to you, and make one thing very, very clear: This article is not a how-to. This is an advanced procedure and the text here is not enough to teach you how to do it. BRIAN DECKER iam: xPUREx Brian was the first person I saw doing this procedure, although in the early days he was using a very different version than he uses now. He pierces (and more) at Sacred Body Arts on Canal St. in NYC. Brian is also an accomplished scarification and heavy modification artist. TOM BRAZDA iam: TomBrazda Tom is considered the primary inventor of the surface bar and ran Stainless Studios in Toronto, Canada for ten years (where I worked for him and learned a lot!) before moving on to a smaller salon environment. You can find him at TomBrazda.com. ZACHARY ZITO iam: zak Zak is currently working at Mainstreet Tattoo in Edgewood, Maryland. It all started one day at the age of thirteen, when he was skating home from a friend’s house and found a PFIQ on the side of the road, and the rest is history. He’s been piercing since 1993 and like most piercers at the time is largely self taught. BME: What do you tell people when they come in asking about surface piercing? TOM: First we talk about risks and rejection, and then I explain to them the different ways I can do the piercing. We talk about care issues and possible lifestyle changes that will help them contribute to a successful healed piercing. We also talk about longterm concerns such as accidents and how to deal with them — all in all this initial consultation takes about an hour. ZAK: Usually for me it starts with a phone call from someone just trying to find a studio that will do it — most in this area turn them away due to inexperience, and eventually they get pointed in my direction, and then I have them come in for an in-person consultation. BRIAN: I explain the procedure in detail to them, the way the jewelry has to be custom designed for them, and how and why it works with their body. I haven’t used a needle for a surface piercing in four years and with the results I’ve seen with transdermally implanting the bars, I’m not about to start again. Some people find the idea of punching and elevating the skin unsettling, but I assure them it’s not nearly as bad as they think… I can’t remember ever having anyone walk out because I’m not using a needle, and these days people actually seek me out because I don’t use a needle. BME: Let’s get right into the procedure itself. How exactly do you do a “punch and taper” or “transdermally implanted” surface piercing? TOM: After I’ve talked to them for long enough to make informed consent, we inspect the area of the proposed piercing in terms of tissue stability — does it stretch or flex, and how does it fold when they bend? I look for the most stable placement I can find. Then I determine the dimensions of the jewelry that are going to be needed. If I’ve got it handy we can go ahead and do the piercing, but a lot of the time it has to be custom ordered. Before we actually start the piercing, we talk about what they can expect from the procedure itself. I prep the area and spend a lot of time marking it to make sure I’ve got the best placement both in aesthetics and technical placement. This is redone as many times as it takes for me to be satisfied it’s the best it can be. I actually give the customer the choice of insertion method after explaining all the issues to them, but if they choose the punch and taper method, the first thing I do is double check all my tools to ensure I have everything and all the sizes are right and everything fits together as it should. I also make sure I have enough gauze on hand, because some bleeding control is often needed — although because the vascularization is much higher in the deeper fatty tissue, unless you go a little too deep there’s usually not a lot of blood. I make the two holes by dermal punching down into the tissue. I take a normal taper and put it into the first hole and pull up on the skin a bit to make sure that the taper is at the bottom of the subcutaneous layer. Then I gently push the taper toward the other hole, applying force as necessary. When the taper is at the exit hole, I put one of the dermal punches back into the hole to “grab” the end of the taper. I find this works better than a small receiving tube because some of the fatty tissue can get in the way and the dermal punch helps cut the tissue if needed. After the taper is through, I follow it with a second taper that’s screwed onto the jewelry. That pulls the jewelry into place, and the rest goes like a normal piercing. I make sure to keep them in the studio for ten minutes to chill out to make sure they’re OK, and make them promise to come back and check with me later so we can be sure everything’s healing like it should. Above: Punch and taper procedure by Tom Brazda

BRIAN: First thing I do as well is the jewelry design — a lot of poking and pinching at the skin. My main goal is to fit the jewelry exactly to the piercing tunnel I’m going to make. Any pressure is going to mean a greater chance of scarring or migration. It takes a bit of practice learning how to hold the skin in different areas, and what areas need what depths.

After prepping the skin and marking, I pinch the skin up with my thumb and index finger, and twist a 1.5mm biopsy punch down into the dermis and straight into the subcutaneous tissue — generally that’s 2 to 5mm, 2mm being thin skin like temples and inner wrists, and 5mm being areas like the back. These aren’t just standards though — you need to pinch up the skin before punching so you can make it much easier to tell when you’ve reached the subcutaneous layer.

After I’ve removed that small cylinder of dermis, I insert my elevating tool straight down into the hole and shift it so it’s parallel with the skin. I slowly work my way across the subdermis at the same depth as the lifts on the jewelry I’m putting it. The tool I use for the elevation is 6mm bar stock with about two inches of one end milled down to about 2mm width. It’s sturdy and and the ease of using the handle allows me more control and requires less pressure than a taper pin, especially in harder to separate areas like the nape. The consistent flattened shape of the tool tip keeps the pocket tight and uniform so the jewelry sits firmly.

I then insert a small 12ga steel rod that’s round on one end and externally threaded on the other into the pocket as if I’m doing an implant. To make sure the tunnel doesn’t arc up into the dermis, I poke the end of a 12ga taper down into the exit hole and match it up with the end of the rod and follow the rod back out that exit hole. So at this point it looks like a surface piercing with a straight bar in it.

Since I bend all my own pieces, I use step-down external threading on my jewelry. I’ve tried bending internally threaded jewelry but it tends to buckle and break. To keep from pulling threading through the fresh piercing I us a tiny 1/2″ piece of Tygon tubing to attach the surface bar to the 12ga rod. The rod then pulls the jewelry into the piercing in one smooth motion and is removed. The entire thing from punching to putting on the beads takes just a few minutes.

Above: Punch and taper procedure by Brian Decker

ZAK:	Assuming we’ve already talked about everything, I start with explaining again why and what materials I’m using, tell them about sterile technique, and the exact process I’m about to use. We also go over their daily activities and lifestyle again to be as sure as possible that nothing will clash with the piercing they want. We determine the perfect jewelry for them after examining the local anatomy in terms of rise and bar length. Once all that is settled everything goes in the StatIM autoclave. While we’re waiting for that a gross decontamination scrub is done and all the marking is taken care of. The StatIM cassette is opened, hands are scrubbed with Technicare, rinsed, dried, and then misted with Vionexus. I put on my first pair of sterile gloves, and using a sterile 4×4 of Nugauze that is saturated with Technicare I prep the area. These gloves are then disposed of and I put on a new sterile pair. I massage the tissue, doing a non-invasive dissection, to make dermal elevation easier and less traumatic. With a 1.5mm biopsy punch the exits of the wound channel are incised and removed. I use a four inch long threaded taper and insert it into the entry point and elevate the channel being created across the length of the piercing. When the taper reaches the exit hole I massage the tissue to help the taper exit. After that, all that’s left is threading a titanium surface bar onto the taper and feeding it through the channel. I use disc ends for beads, clean the area, and apply a Tegaderm patch to keep the wound from being exposed to outside elements during the first stages of healing.
BME:	What sort of aftercare do you recommend to people?
ZAK:	In a perfect world I’d suggest dry wound care, but since we don’t live in a perfect work I try to get people just to do as close to dry wound care as they can.
TOM:	Just leave it alone as best as you can. If you bump it or it comes in contact with something unclean, clean it with saline immediately. It should be washed daily — gently — and given a couple sea salt soaks for a few minutes, or longer if it gets irritated. Most of all though people need to be aware of their surroundings and prevent problems rather than treating them. Lastly, good health! A healing piercing needs proper resources — nutrients — to be able to heal, and your immune system has to be strong. It doesn’t just happen on its own.
BRIAN:	From my point of view, the most important part of the aftercare for surface “piercings” are the warm or hot water soaks which help soften crusting and drain bacteria from the inside of the pocket. The average body piercing is through less than half an inch of tissue, but surface piercings are usually much longer, making it harder for your body to excrete harmful bacteria and dead tissue from inside it. The warm soaks will also increase blood circulation, and your body needs these white blood cells to heal the piercing, just like any wound. The only antiseptic I recommend for healing is natural sea salts — four teaspoons in a gallon of water, which can then be microwaved to heat it. If you measure this correctly it will match your body’s salinity. Soaps usually have colorings, perfumes, glycerins, triclosan and so on — chemicals that are too strong and can damage and destroy healing tissue. Even for people whose bodies are strong enough to heal with these soaps, healing without them will probably be quicker since your body won’t be spending time fighting off the things that are in the soap!
BME:	If they take care of it, how long does healing take, and what sort of success rates can they expect?
BRIAN:	I think with “perfect” care, complete healing can be quicker than a standard navel or nipple, depending on the placement. Areas with little movement tend to heal in four to six months assuming they’re not banged up. The sad thing is, most people don’t take perfect care of their piercings, so healing times are often longer than they need to be. The success rate I’ve been getting is very good though — exponentially higher than with needle piercing.
ZAK:	I think the majority of healing takes place in the first three months, but I agree that the complete healing is closer to six months. As to the success rate, nothing is 100%, but in the time I’ve been working with this method I haven’t seen any of the pitfalls and problems traditionally associated with surface piercings — no scarring, no rejection, no wound drainage problems, and so on. I’ve even seen them take substantial abuse and other than temporary swelling and a bit of bleeding, they tend to return to normal and don’t show long term effects of that trauma.
TOM:	I’m seeing them healing in no more than three months, personally, but with a surface piercing aftercare is for life. Success of the piercing involves a lot of factors — sometimes it can come down to a choice between lifestyle and a piercing. Enough damage to a well healed surface piercing can cause migration at any time. I tell people that a surface piercing is not permanent in that somewhere down the road it will probably need to come out. Of all the ones I’ve done I’ve only seen one reject though, but I only do the ones I think are going to be successful.
ZAK:	I’ve done quite a few of these as well, to the point where I’ve stopped keeping track of the numbers. Initially I had everyone coming back in weekly so I could keep an eye on them, but all I ever saw was immaculate results… It was actually funny to see people coming in with Tegaterm tan lines around the piercing months later. Above: Punch and taper work by Zachary Zito

BME:	How did your surface piercing technique evolve over time, and how did you come upon this particular technique?
BRIAN:	I adopted the idea from doing transdermal implants — which is why I call them “transdermally implanted surface bars”. When I first started doing them, I was using a #11 scalpel blade to make incisions into the skin. Why I didn’t think to use a dermal punch is beyond me, but after talking to Tom a few years after doing them exclusively with a scalpel I switched. Another one of Tom’s incredible ideas that I’ve adopted is milling down the bottoms of all my bars for a while now, in order to lessen the chance of the jewelry “rolling” over. It’s worked wonders.
TOM:	I think about nine years ago we actually talked about it after looking at pictures of Jon Cobb’s wrist piercing, an 8ga straight bar going from one edge of the wrist to the other. Looking at that all I could think about was how much damage the needle could do traveling across all that tissue and blood vessels. At the time I thought about making two scalpel cuts and tapering across the holes. The idea stayed in my head, but I didn’t think that such a long bar across the wrist was a good idea anyway so I didn’t try that. At about that time we stopped using curved barbells for surface piercing and developed the surface bar. After refining the surface bar I looked at the tissue that I was going to pierce in order to anticipate potential problems and work around them. Later came the use of flat wire bars, which makes a big difference if you’re working with thinner tissue. Down the road you always find those things that you wish you could do but are limited by your process. How do you pierce a person with tissue you can’t even grab? Or a piercing so short that you know it’ll reject quickly? Thinking about these problems brought me back to the old idea from Jon’s wrist piercing. It took me a while before I found someone who’d let me do a piercing that would be a good proof of concept. If you’re doing it on a spot that would have been easy to pierce with a normal surface bar technique it wouldn’t have proved anything. Once I did this, I wanted to get around another problem in surface piercing, and that’s getting a proper entry through the skin, going straight down, straight across, and then straight up. Before you could only do this by piercing at the exact right spot based on what the tissue did when you clamped it, but otherwise the piercing arced through the tissue placing weird stresses on the jewelry and pushing it upwards, increasing the risk of migration. Even if you got through the dermis and epidermis correctly, you still arced through the subcutaneous tissue, which would be visible as a slight bump in the middle of the piercing. So that’s how using the dermal punches came about, and how I got to the procedure I’m using today.
ZAK:	When I started doing surface piercings I was using Teflon and Tygon barbells and placing them with standard piercing needles. Later I switched over to titanium staple bars, but still used needles to place them. When I started to experiment with the idea of using a punch and taper technique rather than a needle, I didn’t know that other people were developing it as well. I was mostly thinking of the shape of the initial wound channels; where the jewelry was sitting on the tissue itself. I thought that using this technique would drastically change things, and the results have been very positive.
BME:	What kind of response have you had from other piercers, and — to ask you an uncomfortable question — what would you say to piercers reading this who’d like to start using the technique?
ZAK:	All the colleagues that I have shared this with, done demonstrations for, or showed healed results to in person have had nothing but good results themselves with it later. If you want to start doing this, find someone that is experienced and do some shadowing to see what’s involved firsthand.
BRIAN:	Pierce yourself or your friends before you pierce customers! It might take some time to learn the feel of the tissue you want to work with since there’s no standard depth for proper separation. If you separate too shallowly, you’ll run into rejection problems. Learn to bend your own jewelry as well so you aren’t forced to wait for custom orders (or compromise and pierce too shallow or too deep). I don’t think this method has any special risks — just the time it takes to do it, maybe five minutes instead of one minute. It’s also a bit messier, as it’s not unusual to strike a small blood vessel with the punch and have to pinch the skin for a minute or two before proceeding with the elevator. It won’t affect the outcome though, but you’ll spend a bit more on gauze maybe!
TOM:	This piercing does take more skill and understanding of the anatomy to perform it well. Shit, I think you could say that about all piercings, but if you’re going to do this, talk to other piercers that have tried it before?

Above: some of the steps in doing a punch and taper surface piercing (photos and procedure: John Joyce, Scarab Body Arts, Syracuse NY; iam: j_scarab).

I also had a chance to talk to Steve Truitt of Stay Gold Tattoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who you may know as stainless on IAM. Steve has been piercing professionally since 1995, and uses a slight variation of this technique for his own surface piercing work. Steve also is an experienced implant and scarification artist, and runs an active suspension group in the Albuquerque area.

BME:	Tell me about the punch and taper technique that you use?
STEVE:	I started off back in 1996 or 1997 using the HTC surface bars, and used those until I tried Tygon in 1999. At the time I was just placing them with a needle, but now I’m using a punch and taper method. Procedurally it’s similar to what Zak, Tom, and Brian are doing — after the cleaning, marking, and so on, I massage the skin for a minute or two to separate the skin from the fascia. Then I dermal punch straight down into my marks. I insert a threaded taper into the first hole and guide it across until it exits the other hole. That taper is attached to Tygon tubing which I draw through the piercing. I trim the Tygon as needed, and it’s done. It’s a little more bleeding than using a needle, but it has a much higher success rate — probably at least 85% or higher (and I’m doing three or four people a week with this method).
BME:	What gave you the idea of switching to using a punch and taper method?
STEVE:	I’d tried it a few times over the past five years, but that was using an elevator rather than a taper. I decided it was just too painful and traumatic to do as my normal procedure, but after talking to Zak about how he was doing them, I ordered some punches, tried it, and loved it!
BME:	How come you don’t use the metal jewelry like most people are using?
STEVE:	Most people find the Tygon is a lot more comfortable to wear. The Tygon does need to be changed occasionally, so I have them come back in the first few months to change it, and then three or four times a year as long as they have the piercing. I can swap in a steel or titanium bar after nine to twelve months, but most people do seem to prefer the Tygon. Triple chest piercing by Steve Truitt
BME:	Are you seeing about the same healing times?
STEVE:	Just switching to punch and taper I saw healing times for surface work drop from six to nine months, down to two or three months in most cases. Even in the harder to heal surface piercings like spinal piercings, they heal in four to six months.
BME:	I’ll ask you as well — any advice or warnings to piercers who’d like to start doing this?
STEVE:	Learn to swim before you jump in the ocean! I see a lot of “piercers” that are attempting things way out of their league. Take your time, learn how skin works, how the body heals, and get all your basic piercings down before you attempt to move to the more complicated procedures and tools. The risks of this procedure are minimal in the hands of an experienced piercer, but they’re greatly compounded in the hands of a hack. You have to be a lot more careful looking for veins with this method, since you don’t want to push a dermal punch in and take out a chunk of an artery, nerve, or vein! Other than that, the only negative I can think of is that there are some States that don’t allow piercers to use dermal punches.

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Thank you very much to the piercers above, and as well I’d like to thank Jakk “ScabBoy” Cook (Express Yourself, Lackawanna NY), Matt Bruce (Spitfire Tattoos, Victoria BC), John Joyce (Scarab Body Arts, Syracuse NY), Tony Snow (Bad Apple, Las Vegas NV), Emilio Gonzalez (Wildcat, Antwerp Belgium), and Keru von Borries (La Paz, Bolivia), who all helped in creating this article with supplemental interviews, commentary, and procedural photos.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com