Ear piercing before "the Gun" was invented

[Guest]

I've pleased my husband too! 2-3

[Guest]

Have yours bf / hub ask you to get yours ears to be pierced again?

My ex. ask me and for that reasion did I leave him but my new bf have ask me to and I don't want to get my ears pierced again.
He ask me 2 to 5 times a week, he can't understand that I only want a single earring i boths ears.
What shal I tell him.

[uri]

Well, I guess it's simple: it's your ears, not his, so it's up to you to decide what you do with them. If he wants it that bad, he may just have his own ears pierced as many times as he likes.

Well maybe if he's not very open-minded you can drop the last part, but I guess he's got to understand, that being with a woman doesn't mean owning her. personally I don't understand this habit of guys who design their gfs/wives to fit their taste, as if they were a piece of furniture or something.

[Guest]

My ears were pierced befoe the gun was invented. My mother pierced them with a hat-pin and cork.
I pierced my daughters ears the same way and my grand daughters and great grand daughters have also had their ears pierced at home similarly.
The only difference is that while I and my daughters have a single piercing in each ear the grandchildren and great grand children have several piercings. Some of them also have nostril piercings which were also done at home

[Cathy58]

My grandmother pierced my ears 50 years ago with a device that looked like a large needle with a wooden handle. She numbed my ear with ice, put a cork behind my ear and pushed the nedle through. Then she did the same thing to my other ear.

Back then all the earrings had backs that screwed on the posts like a bolt on a nut. The only way my sister and I ever changed our earrings was to change each others. We though that if we ever went without earrings for any longer than it took to change them our holes would instantly close up and we would never be able to wear earrings again.

[acomplia no rx needed]

Easy state! Sum to favorite

[GP]

My grandmother pierced my ears 50 years ago with a device that looked like a large needle with a wooden handle. She numbed my ear with ice, put a cork behind my ear and pushed the nedle through. Then she did the same thing to my other ear.

Your grandmother's device sounds like it may have been an ice pick. I have heard of those being used to pierce ears many years ago.

[larbir]

I had my ears pierced by a old method. How it was done I told in a story in the “Husbands w pierced ears” forum.
Now we learned some more about the method and history.
The tools was brought home by a couple that emigrated to Argentina in the end of the 1800’s and moved back in the early 1900’s. That’s were they learned this method.
The idea is similar to the cork and needle method, but this one is in fact slightly more sofistcated!
The tool consist of a small oval silver box. For to open it U have to screw of a nut in the center the cover. In the the box there is a needle with a handle. The needle is about 20 mm long, 2 mm thick and fit to a handle. The handle, thick as a pencil is made of aprox. 40 mm long silver tube. There is also a thing we believed was a thimble... No we have learned that it is a “receiving cork”! The top of it is a web made of silver threads. When you pierce, the needle go through the ear and in between threads. It works better than a cork since the needle don't get stuck.
Now to how to use it. Put the needle, the “silver cork” and the new ear rings in the box. Fill it with water, screw on the top and put it in warm stow.
Now the box act like a pressure boiler or autoclave! It’s like a stem engine while the water disappears. After two hour it is ready to take out of the stove for to cool and some 30 minutes later it’s reddy to use.
We were told to just place the “cork” behind the lobe and gently “drill” the needle through the ear. That’s the same way the acupuncture is done and you also get a more lasting experience...
When the hole is done it’s just to insert the ring.
This method - the whole piercing session, with all the preparations, take 2-3 hours! If you like piercing, I guess this is the most thrilling method to use and it will be something you never will forget!
By the way... I now have both my ears pierced and my wife have 3+5...

[Kandi2]

The post above is very interesting as it is similiar to what my mother told me about having her ears pierced in the late 1950's well before pierced ears became popular in the US. When she was ten years old her mother told her it was time for her have her ears pierced and begin wearing earrings. She then took her into the kitchen and produced a sterlized wooden handled device similiar to an icepick but with a smaller sharper needle like stem and then placed a cork behind each ear then proceeded to pierce both her ears and put a gold stud in each. At the time she was the only girl in the school system with pierced ears until her sister turned ten the next summer and my grandmother pierced her ears.
My mother pierced my ears for my second birthday but used hollow needles and a cork. Since then I have had each ear pierced an additional three times using the same method.

[taviasmith]

The women in my family all had their ears pierced at an early age. My mother's and grandmothers ears were pierced with a sewing needle and thread. The tread was left in until the holes healed. My grandmother says she was the only person in her school with pierced ears, and in the 1940's and 1950's pierced ears were not popular. Then about 1957, according to my grandmother, it became a fad. Life magazine had a large story about it and had several pictures according to her. Then around 1962, the piercing gun came into the picture, and department stores had 'ear piercing days'. Pierced earring became all the rage.

My grandmother say before that, pierced earrings were hard to find and were expensive, She says she had a couple of pair and just never changed them. I don't ever remember seeing my mother and grandmother without earrings. The same goes for my aunts. My ears were pierced by my mother with a needle, and small gold balls inserted. I think I was 3 or 4. All the females in my family are pierced at about the same age and with a needle with gold balls inserted to allow healing to take place.

I found a story on Ethel Granger, the women with the 12" waist, and her ears and nose were pierced by her husband, Will. He tells how he did it in his book about her. This was about 1925 I think. My grandmother says she knew a woman whose ears were pierced with a red hot needle, and the woman hated the holes and would not wear earrings. The question of this thread is what was used before the piercing gun, and I would say a needle to make the hole and various things inserted to keep the hole open.
Before the steel needle, perhaps a small stick?

[GP]

Following up on the post above, I remember an article in Life magazine from the late 1950s about girls getting their ears pierced. Other magazines also ran articles about pierced ears because, like any new trend, people wanted to read about them and it helped sell magazines. Some years later when boys first starting getting one or both ears pierced the magazines ran articles about that too.

Jewelry manufacturers were in business to make money, so they made products that the public would buy. When very few women had their ears pierced there was little demand for pierced earrings, so the jewelers did not make many of them. Until the development of the modern push/pull backs for stud earrings, the studs had to be threaded and the backs tapped like a nut so they could be screwed onto the studs. This additional work made them expensive to produce, so they were expensive to buy. They were also much more difficult to put in and remove than modern stud earrings, so women tended to wear them for longer periods of time.

When wires for dangle earrings first became fashionable some girls would have only one or two pairs of wires and several pairs of dangles. Often they would unhook their wires, change the dangles and then close up their wires again without ever removing them from their ears. I knew one girl whose wires had been put into her ears shortly after they were pierced and her ears had grown so tightly around the wries that she could not remove them even if she wanted to. Sometimes she would not wear any dangles, but still had her wires in her ears. I was fascinated by the idea that she would have those wires in her ears for the rest of her life.

Pierced ears go back before recorded history, so there is no record of what was used to pierce ears in prehistoric times. The oldest evidence is a mummified body that was found in a glacier in Europe about ten years ago that had pierced ears. The body was estimated to be several thousand years old. Back then they may have used sharppieces of animal bones to make a hole in anything including piercing ears.

[taviasmith]

I am glad my ears were pierced at an early age and with a needle and not a 'gun'.
I have enjoyed wearing earrings for many years, and have added several holes to my ears, a nostril stud and septum ring.
The younger generation in my family continues to be pierced at an early age, and are taught to always wear nice earrings.
(Girls and now boys if they desire to be pierced.)
It is interesting that piercing was done for centuries with a needle or even sharp bone or stick.
Then came the modern 'gun', which has given way to the hollow needle.
Yes, I know the gun is still used in most mall shops.