I remember getting these aftercare instructions. They were also piercing almost EVERYTHING with CBRs so you could move the jewelry THE MOST. It was a pretty aggressive time 😂

omg turning the jewelry using soap, peroxide, alcohol AND ointment??? that must hurt more than getting the actual piercing done. it's also so interesting that all the diagrams are of explicit piercings!

More of this historical stuff?! YES PLEEEEEEASE!😍😍👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I was 15 going on 16 in 1996 and had my helix pierced then and with a disposable hollow needles and had that same aftercare instructions with the antibacterial soap, alcohol and ointment. I'm glad it's improved now and recently got a piercing and told to use saline spray to clean my piercing. And I never saw an industrial, tragus or labret piercings in 1996 but I had my high school classmate had her tongue pierced.

This tracks with my first piercings around 1999/2000

LMFAO, I still have that book! I started body piercing in 1998. My piercing master Angel Lira has a copy of the gauntlet handbook. He made me a photocopy which I also have in my own piercing bible & portfolio. That book you have came with my first body piercing kit in some cool brief cases which I still have as well. Industrial piercings were just getting known in 1998. My piercing master also said Fakir Musafar had some strange ritural ways of surgical preparation at some of his classes. I won't mention here lol

I love stuff like this! Little pieces of history! I imagine this booklet was pretty revolutionary at the time, whilst the cold soaking is uhh... questionable, and the aftercare is also uhh... questionable, the emphasis on hygiene is still really great. I always remember my nanny telling me about how she got piercings when she was a kid- they'd all go down to the local traveler lady who lived in a little wooden caravan at the end of their road, each with some pocket money and maybe some flowers to say thank you. The woman would rub the area to be pierced with rubbing alcohol, heat a sewing needle over a flame, place a cork behind your ear and pierce you. If someone wanted their nose pierced (very rare at the time), she would cut a cork and place it up the nose almost like a makeshift receiving tube. She would then obviously remove the needle and just shove through a little stud and that was that. It would have been around the late 30s or early 1940s! It's so interesting to see how techniques and knowledge have changed over the years, and what hasn't changed. Also, when I got all of my piercings a long time ago between the ages of 14-16, I got the majority of them done at the local dodgy tattoo shop for dirt cheap, and I really do mean dirt cheap, it's a wonder I never got any infections honestly (but I was very young and stupid so I didn't know it was bad because all my friends went and were fine lol), but even the piercers there always told me to not touch the piercing while healing, and to not put anything in the piercing, just gently clean with saline which is wild for somewhere that was piercing all ear piercings and nostril piercings with a gun with shitty plated jewellery 😱 maybe they should have read this booklet tbh lol

You saying 1996 was almost 30 years ago hurt my soul lol I may have missed it - did their aftercare instructions tell you to wash your hands before cleaning the piercing? Hopefully they at least had that in there. I also found it entertaining that they tell you to soak the piercings in the germicide solution, and then run it under water. So let's clean (some) of that stuff off, and then undo it by putting it under water that they probably didn't know if there were contaminants in it (or even the last time they thoroughly washed the faucet, both tap and handles). This was great! I'd love more history stuff like this

cool vid :D I felt similarly when reading "a brief history of body adornment in western culture" (I majored in anthropology & did a lot of research in regards to body mods. it was worth every penny!!) I haven't read through it all yet, but it's pretty much two time capsules in one: you get an inside look of how the piercing subculture was (up till the early 2000s) which is told thru the lens of someone involved in the subculture from 20 years ago! very fascinating stuff :3

This was a good laugh. Thank you for sharing! What a piece of industry history.

Super interesting and fun. How do you think these processes will develop in the next 30 years?

Freakin' fascinating to compare! Thanks for the knowledge. You're criminally under-subscribed!!

And somehow despite this aftercare, I still have my 30-year-old snug (which was definitely not called a snug at the time)!

The aftercare. 😭

I started getting pierced in the mid 90s, first with guns at Spencer's, then at a real shop when I turned 18 in '99. I remember the old aftercare- suds up some harsh antibac soap in your new puncture wound, let it sit till you want to cry, work it out by twisting your jewelry a dozen times, then finish it off with a dab of goop to keep all that pesky oxygen out! And for oral piercings, nothing beats full-alcohol Listerine! THE INFLAMMATION. I have no idea how anything ever healed lol. I still get flashbacks whenever I smell Provon or Dial