What does gauge mean in relation to body jewelry?

When talking of body jewelry and piercing, gauge refers to the size of the body jewelry being used. To be specific, gauge size determines the thickness or the width of the jewelry. That portion of the body jewelry, which actually goes inside your skin, is measured in gauge size. For instance, if you were using a barbell for a piercing, then the gauge size would not be the measure of the two balls at the ends of the barbell, but would indicate the thickness of the bar in between the two balls.

As the number of the gauge size goes higher, the thickness of the jewelry becomes lesser. Hence, a barbell of gauge size 12 would be thinner than one that was a gauge size 10. 16 gauge size jewelry is considered to be ideal for new piercings.

The thicker your jewelry gets, the lower the gauge size will become. Gauge size �0� and �00� are the thickest (00 being thicker than 0). Once some piece of body jewelry exceeds this thickness, it is no longer measured in gauge size but in fractions and full inches.

Gauge is particularly important for ear stretching body jewellery. Smaller gauges go up in parts of milimetres (e.g. 1.6mm, 2.0mm, 2.4mm, 3.2mm) and then go up in whole mm's from 4.0mm to 8.0mm. There is then usually a jump to 10mm, then 12, 14, 16, 19 and so on. Expanders are used to increase the gauge of a stretched piercing gradually. PTFE tape can also be used to increase the size of a piece of jewellery gradually. Article about body jewellery size can be found here http://www.redpiranhapiercing.com/blog/what-size-body-jewellery-will-work-your-piercing. Info on gauge and measuring tools for gauge can be found here http://www.redpiranhapiercing.com/useful-info/glossary/g?title=