Steve Haworth has been playing with a piercing-style method for implanting genital beads with a reduced level of trauma. Normally either a larger gauge incision has to be made and/or a taper has to be used to stretch the holes up to the size of the bead to place it under the skin. Using his “squishy” silicone beads, he reduces the incision size required to place a 1/4″ bead down to 8ga.
The tools: A. a 1/4″ taper for comparison (this is what would normally be required to place the bead), B. a pusher rod which will later be used to push the bead into the skin, C. the bead reducer which will “inject” the bead, D. the 3/16 taper which leads the bead into the hole, and of course E. the silicone beads themselves.
First the bead is placed in the reducer and then compressed down into its tip, squeezing it from round to a nearly cylindrical narrow form.
The bead reducer is then attached to the 3/16 taper.
The taper and reducer assembly is pushed into the fresh piercing (made with an 8ga needle for a 1/4″ bead, or a 10ga needle for a 3/16″ bead) behind the needle, and then release the taper, leaving the reducer in place.
The pusher rod then pops the bead out of the reducer, leaving it under the skin and it expands to its normal 1/4″ form.
Steve is talking about offering instruction in this method at his advanced beading seminars, and may be selling the tools and beads on his eBay store in the future. The only problem that I can foresee from this method is that so far silicone has had an unusually high materials reaction (ie. allergic response) in comparison to titanium, steel, and teflon beads. This reaction is not supported by the scientific literature on the subject, so it’s yet to be determined why silicone from Steve has seen these complications.
