Ever since I first saw the picture on BME a few yrs ago of a horizontal transverse lobe (done with a CBR) through a small tunnel I loved the idea and wanted it. But I was never that keen on stretched piercings (all that's changed now). I eventually decided that I liked the smaller stretchings, but not the big ones that deformed ears. I think mine now is somewhere in between :). I didn't really know anyone with stretched ears in my circle of people. The only people I'd seen with them were moshers, and I wasn't part of that crowd of people to ask any of them. I'd seen some on a second cousin, but he didn't really talk much. I decided that one day I'd stretch a very small tunnel in my ear so I could put a transverse piercing through it.
At A Glance Author Spacy Contact spacecadet0001@hotmail.com IAM Spacy Artist Me I had mixed attitudes to my stretchings, but from most people it was a disgusted fascination. My college friends (I went to a farming college at the time) used to try and guess what the new objects in my ear were, but they always used to yell eeeeeeeew.
I used a lot of olive oil while stretching, as lube and also to keep my ear well moisturized and stretchy. I swear by olive oil. I played with my jewelry a lot to keep it loose making sure I pulled it in all directions and now just downwards. I usually stretched from front to back in case of blowout as I didn't want to end up with it on the front of my ear, and when I cleaned my jewelry every day I put it back in from back to front so that if there was a tiny bit of blowout it'd help get rid of it.There's pics of my ear from 10g to 1/2 inch with the transverse piercing through it on my IAM page. I've written this stretching experience size by size so its easy to follow and cause I've been using my IAM diary to write it. Sorry if it's a bit long, but hopefully it'll help people who want to stretch. Not that I've done it the perfect way, but it's worked for me and I haven't had any nasty problems or blow out. If you've got any questions about it email or IAM me. I like getting emails and IAMs.
14g (1.6mm) -I got my tongue stretched to 10g in the summer of last yr (2000). I kept the old tongue stud from it and this tongue stud really annoyed me. I hated having jewelry around that I wasn't using (I've got over that now :) ) and wanted to find a use for this barbell. I decided in the October or November that I was going to use it to start stretching first lobe piercing in my right ear that I'd got pierced by a gun in Wildings when I was 10. I'd read enough on BME and from the mailing list to feel confident enough to start stretching myself, as the I didn't have a decent piercer very nearby and I was pretty skint cause've college. It took a little bit of pushing to get the14g (1.6mm) tongue barbell through, but not too much. It wad a bit red and sore and dry and flaky for a few days, and had some discharge from it for about a week.
10g (2.4mm) -On the day before millennium eve I got the url for a page which gave the gauge size of household objects from the BME mailing list. It was http://www.bmeworld.com/erica/gauges.html. This page has proved invaluable to my stretching :). I read on there that q-tips are 10g (2.4mm) so I cut of the ends, and pushed it through my ear lobe. It went in quite easily. Then I trimmed it, so it ended up looking like a really small green tunnel, though it looked huge to me at the time. I felt well cool going out millennium eve with my tiny tunnel. People could notice the difference now between my tiny tunnel and normal earring size.
8g (3.2mm) -Just over a week later, on the 8th January, I was bored and looking through the list of household objects again. I was looking at what I could use for 8g when I decided to stretch, and saw that I could use the inside of a biro. So I decided to cut, clean and file down the inside of a biro ready for when I decided to stretch. I pushed it up against the 10g tunnel in my ear to see how much of a difference there was and it took me by surprise and slipped through without me even wanting it to. So I had nice new 8g ears.
6g (4mm) -Nearly 3 wks later on the 21st Jan I decided I needed to stretch to the next size up as the biro tunnel kept falling out all the time as it was very loose and I was afraid it'd fall out in my sleep. I found the lollypop stick that I had cut filed and buffed the week before (I knew nail files and nail buffers had a non-girly purpose) but it wouldn't fit through my ear and I didn't want to push to hard in case I damaged anything, so I filed down the end of the lollypop stick to make a taper, buffed it, coated it in Vaseline as lube (which I wouldn't recommend, this is before I discovered olive oil) and with quite a bit of pushing got it through my ear. I them pushed the taper out with another cut and filed lollypop stick. It hurt more than my other stretchings, it stung and throbbed a bit and was a bit swollen, but they swelling went down by the next day and it was just a bit sore. A few days later it started looking dry as well and I noticed a small hard ridge on the b ack a few weeks later, which must've been blowout. I started rubbing olive oil in every day for this, and putting the plug back in backwards, which worked.
4g (5mm) -Over a month later on 25th Feb I felt my ears were ready to stretch to 4g. Only problem was I couldn't find any household objects to use. I'd seen some nice 6mm plugs I was gonna buy for 2g, but nothing for 4g. It said on the web page chopsticks, but I only had wooden ones. My sis had plastic ones but she wouldn't let me cut the ends off, grrrrrrr. I tried using the front bit of a biro as a taper to 2g planning to push it a tiny tiny bit each day, but it was a bit steep and kept falling out anyway. I found a big pen the next day that had a pen cartridge inside that I guessed to be about 4g diameter, it was a tiny bit bigger than the end of the chopstick. It was tapered, and nice and smooth so with olive oil it tapered quite easily to what I thought was 4g. Afterwards it was swollen and sore and there were lots of crusty bits. Two days later I took it out for the first time since stretching for cleaning and it was bleeding inside quite a bit. I didn't see that it wa s bleeding before because the tube was so tight that the blood couldn't escape. I'm guessing that the end of the cartridge must've been 6mm not 5mm and I stretched too much, so I put a smaller part of the cartridge in that's more like 5mm. It looked like a liqorice allsort cause it had ink stains inside :) Two days later the crusties had gone and my ear was better.
3g (6mm) -I didn't realise until recently that 6mm was actually closer to 3g not 2g, so I thought I was stretching to 2g. The 'liquorice allsorts' biro bit was slightly tapered, so it naturally stretched to 6mm and I put a clear tube in on 19th March. I didn't realise that they'd stretched until my 6mm wildcat plug arrived on 19th April and fitted in perfectly. I had trouble with the o-rings irritating my ears on it a bit, so I used the end of a glow hoop that I'd cut and thoroughly rinsed for a bit, but then I worked out if I didn't put the o-rings on tight and put them on the ends of the plug my ears were fine.
0g (8mm) -About 3 wks later on the 10th May the 8mm clear PMMA plug I ordered from wildcat arrived. It looked huge when I took it out of its packet. I lubing it up and pushing it through my ear, no luck. I tried using it to push the other plug out, no luck. I realised there was no way I'd get it in without a taper. I remembered that biros were 0g, so I trimmed one down, filed it, covered it in olive oil and pushed it through my ear, followed by my plug. It took a bit of getting used to seeing something that big in my ear. 2 days later when I took it out there was gungy stuff and blood and it was hard to get it back in after. I think I tore it because I stretched to big a stretch (I thought my ears were 2g before, not 3g which they actually were) and because the pen taper I used had edges, it wasn't a round pen. Silly me. 2 days later though the crusties had gone.
00g (10mm) -Just over 2 wks later on 27th May my 10mm flesh tunnel from wildcat arrived, so I decided to stretch. It was a bit soon really, which was stupid, but I was nr the end of my stretching. I thought I'd be stopping at 00g and piercing my transverse. It wouldn't go straight in, so I found a round large pen that taped from about 8mm to slightly larger than 10mm for a taper. I took out my 2nd ear piercing as it was beginning to get irritated just after a stretch because of the swelling (though I put it back in a week or so later and it was fine). I lubed up the taper and pushed it gradually in over 30mins. It really hurt even though the taper was very gradual. When I got to the end I left it in all day, much to the disgust of my friends. Later that evening I coated the tunnel in olive oil and pushed the taper out with the tunnel. Looking at it with a bar against it I realised that it'd look to small for the vertical transverse lobe I had planned, so I decided that in a few weeks I'd go to 12mm (half inch). This was the worse stretch of all afterwards, my ear had a lot of swelling and discharge and was very sensitive because I stretched too fast, but four days later it had all cleared up
Final stretch 12mm (nearly half inch)This was one of the easiest stretches. I did it a month later on 28th June with another wildcat tunnel. I lubed up a biro that went from slightly bigger than 10mm at one end to 12mm at the other and it slipped through really easily, and I pushed the biro out with the tunnel. I had no trouble after this one. And its now the perfect size for my transverse lobe, as I'm using a nipple rounder as the tunnel to pierce through and the smallest outside diameter of a nipple rounder is 12mm.
Look out for the vertical lobe experience as I'm typing that up soon.
Is anyone still awake? Hope u found this useful, anyway :)