Stretching lobes: best method?

Ok, so I have a few stretched hoooles in my ears, up to 20mm. I'm going to stretch two to 30mm, from 20mm and 6mm.

There are a couple of ways I know to stretch, dead stretching (where you push the taper straight through) and gradual (put the taper in at your size then push it through every though days when your lobe gets used to the previous slight size increase).

So which one do you guys think is best?

 

I do dead stretcing but then again my stretches are way smaller

 

Either taper [although its rough on the ears]
or tape!
you get PTFE tape or BONDAGE tape and wrap a layer or two around your plug, pop it in, wear that for a few weeks till it's loose, and do it again until you're at the desired size.

 

actually, dead stretching usually refers to inserting a larger plug without using a taper.
gradually stretching with a taper is a bad idea. while the thing is sitting in there, it pulls unevenly on your lobe and gets caught on stuff, causing irritation and swelling which make it harder to stretch and promote scarring.

im a fan of dead stretching using rounded glass single flare or no flare plugs. tapers can give you a false sense of how ready your lobes are and can make you tear more easily.
with the single flare plug method, you have to wait till your ears are very comfortable at your size and are naturally stretchy enough to continue. it should never hurt though a feeling of pressure (which i think is rather pleasant) is fine.
one thing that i do to help my ears get stretchy is to wear heavyish jewelry. that can mean large guage cbrs through tunnels, stone jewelry, etc. but only wear heavy stuff once your lobes are healed from stretching (couple of weeks for me). and never wear really heavy stuff that distorts your lobe too much, and never use weighted jewelry that is more then a size or so smaller than the size youre at b/c that can lead to thinning and weak spots for some people. you need to distribute the weight evenly.

anyway, thats how i like to stretch

edit: tape is awesome too.

 

well I just stretched again, tapers are good for the smaller sizes using it to jump from a 14g to a 6g for example, 6g to 4g is easy to deadstretch 4g to 2g, 0g, 00g and 000g is a little harder to deadstretch, though in general I think these sizes are the harder to stretch, when much larger weight is your friend

spoken from experience

ps I dont really know what size I stretched my 0g to cause I just used the inner sleeve of a ball bearing instead of any real jewellery

 

i personally do the "dead stretching" method and it works fine for me. I will go up a guage and then wait about a month or two the go up again. or whenever it's healed. just remember to clean it, and with CLEAN HANDS, twist it around after a few days. it gets the crusties off and it helps(for me) with my ear getting used to it.

 

I was told not to twist unless you are using a porous material that can stick to the skin, though I never do listen to piercers

 

i would think twisting after stretching would be ok, (though it wont make it heal any faster) but i would only do it when the jewelry was lubed up with oil or you were cleaning it with soap (in which case you would take it out). but if its still tender, you shouldnt mess with it at all, other than applying oil with a q-tip or something. theres no need to irritate freshly stretched ears.
fresh piercings though, should not be rotated at all during the healing process. they should be left mostly alone.

 

Twisting it helps for me. i dont do it right away, but after a couple of days. but the only times my ears have got infected was done professionally. the 4 i did myself have never gotten infected. maybe my ears are just weird?

 

Not a fan of dead stretching at all. I just blew out my right ear because of it.
I was going up to 7/8's, my left ear took it just fine, but my right ear started to split.
It didn't necessarily blow out, it just swelled really bad, and yeah..started to split.
Now it shrunk down to 00g. I am hella pissed.


I'm a huge fan of tape. I was just rushing it I guess,
I thought my ears could take it since I had my 3/4's in for 4-5 months and they were all nice and stretchy.

Oh well.

 

If the taper wouldn't slide through at first I would gradually stretch it and I had no problems with it. It sure is a hell of a lot kinder to your ears, there's no pain at all. After getting them through all the way I would leave the taper in for a few days to let my ears adjust before I went shoving any plugs in right away. I had friends who used tape though, worked for them *I just never got into it*

 

7/8" is not the next size up from 3/4" so a tear would make sense. i still maintain that it would be easier to tear with a taper though.

 

I've tried using tape before and when it didn't work at first I gave up instantly.
I would just like to say that I went to half inch the other day using tape.

 

I went from 16 gauge to 6 gauge using that tape method. It went fine and never hurt or anything(never oozed) plus being so cheap I only had to buy the tape and it was cheaper than buying tapers or keep buying jewelry.

 

Did dead stretching from a 10G to a 4G hurt like a mother, and was the only body modification i almost passed out on. No idea why, i have had everything pierced besides my twat and i have almost 25% of my body tattooed including my sternum, Soooooo yeah ..

 

Ohh thanks for the responses I though this thread had died xD

I bought some PVC tape the other day, and oh my am I impressed ^^ It is soooo much cheaper than buying new plugs and stuff!! I'm going from a 6 to a 20 and a 20 to a 30 (different ears), would be so expensive to get all the tapers and stuff but <3 pvc xD

I prefer gradual stretching with a spiral, out of all the taper designs I think the spirals are the best. Claws and cresents are ok for graudual, but you have to have one huge bit sticking out one side of your ear, which looks silly and is uncomfy. Spirals are just perfect ^^ I have a 20mm one, and that thing is beasty doesn't look too good when I wear it though, the direction of my lobes make it stick out alomst 90 degress to my head, so I feel like such a tit xD

I'm gonna start to try to carve/whittle my own plugs Now that I'm getting into the bigger sizes it would be cool to learn and save some monies Anyone know good woods? I have a box in my shed of random ones, and some might react to skin, so do you think if I put a varnish over the wood it will seal in the toxins?

 

I just realized that what I had thougt is a 0g plug is really just below 000g, no wonder it was hard getting it through

 

alls I know is that it's pretty tricky to make decent plugs, have them at the right size, and not fuck up your ears. research it a lot first.

 

depends on your personal aesthetic i suppose.
they look like you would expect them to look: stretched out ear holes.
i think they look rather nice w/o jewelry so long as they arent fucked up.
below 4g or so will generally close back to "normal". i lost about 7 sizes when i took my plugs out.

 

well i'm at half inch and when i take mine out i can close them in a few minutes. hah