• Traditional Tongue Piercings

The most famous tongue piercing is the traditional tongue piercing. This tongue piercing goes directly through the top of the tongue and exits on the bottom side. This special piercing is also known for it’s increasing swelling after the initial piercing and swelling can last up to a week or more. Healing time is approximately one to two months.

• Tongue Exposed Piercings

Tongue surface piercings can be placed anywhere on the surface of the tongue, whether it be horizontally or vertically down the tongue. In addition to this, they can also be on either the top of the tongue, or the bottom of the tongue (which is often referred to as a lingum piercing,) or the tip of the tongue.

• Horizontal Tongue Piercings

Horizontal tongue piercings are fairly honest. They are a piercing that passes horizontally from the tongue whereas local tongue piercings corss vertically through the tongue. Sometimes, if not correctly pierced, a tongue ring in this piercing can interfere with eating, speech or both.

• Tongue Rim Piercings

A tongue rim piercings can be thought a variation of a tongue surface piercing. This piercing or group of piercings sits on the rim of the tongue. Generally, the wearer uses traditional tongue rings or types of captivating beads. Unfortunately, this piercing has been known to cause serious tooth damage if improperly placed.

• T-Bar Piercings

The T-Bar piercing is a little more complex than some other tongue piercing. This piercing takes a bit more time and wait than other tongue piercings because it needs two separate arrangements to meet someone. The first appointment is used for the piercer to insert the tongue ring used for piercing horizontally or vertically, based on the user’s preference.

After several weeks of becoming well, a second appointment will be required for a third hole to develop the ‘T’ appearance of the piercing. Custom body jewelry is inserted and the third piercing is screwed into the tongue ring barbell to form the desired ‘T’ shape.  From a viewing standpoint, the piercing appears as three separate tongue ring balls on the surface of the tongue.

• Tongue Web Piercings

The tongue web piercing is also somewhat self-explanatory. The piercing itself corsses through the webbing on the innerside of the tongue. Oftentimes, the wearer inserts either straight or curved body jewelry, sometimes using tongue rings with beads or rings.  Healing time is constantly sharp, as with most oral piercings.

Tongue ring piercings are becoming increasingly popular with younger generations. Tongue rings are comfortable to hide for work matters and socially accepted among their peers. It is not hard to determine why tongue rings and other body piercings are becoming more and more popular.

Tongue piercing is most popularly done with straight barbell. 14 Ga is the most common gauge used for tongue piercing. In order to give room to the swelling, the early length of the pierced barbell should be at least 3/4″. Once the tongue piercing has been healed, it can be replaced to a shorter barbell of 9/16″(14mm) which is the most common size. Wearing a shorter barbell after the piercing is healed is suggested.

Barbell fashion of body jewelry is composed of a straight bar and with a bead on each end, one or both beads unscrewable for removal and/or replacing of the beads. Often one of the beads is fixed, either via epoxy or welding, so that only one bead is used to fix or remove the jewelry. Barbell threads are mostly right-handed.

There are roughly about 5 kinds of barbells for body jewelry.  The internally threaded barbells are slightly more costly than externally threaded barbells as there will be additional machining and labor included. It is also considered superior to the external barbells as it is less likely to cause damage or irritation especially at the time of piercing. An internally threaded barbell has a bead with a receiving tube machine into it which connects with a threaded post extending from the center.

Although the externally threaded barbells have become less common, the internally threaded barbells have increased in popularity. It is named so because shaft of the bar has threads at both ends to allow beads with the receiving threads to be attached to the tongue ring.

Named because of the curvature, curved barbells can also be known as a navel curve. It is mechanically same to straight barbells instead of that they are curved. Curvature on a curved barbell can range from about straight to circular, with some barbells basically being spiral, with the ends overlapping but separated to allow the insertion
of the jewelry. A variation on this design is a J-bar, a slightly curved barbell (sometimes referred to as a bananabell or banana barbell) with a 90 degree bend near one end, used in verticalnavel piercings to position the decorative  end of the body jewelry more appropriately. They can be either internally threaded or externally threaded.

Circular barbells, also known as horseshoe barbells are used in some types of piercings. They are named so due to their shape.

In all surface piercings, surface bars are used. Barbells for surface piercing have a pair of 90 degree bends in the same direction, so they can be used for surface piercing. Because of this design the pressure that would be affected by other body jewelry designs that participate to disallow in healing surface piercings is minimized.