Brian W Skellie

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BIO
Piercer/Founder — Piercing Experience est. 1992 piercing.org and statim.us
Joined APP 1996, served on the board 1997-99, as International Liaison 2010-13, as President 2014-2016, Medical Liaison 2017-2020, now serving as CIO
Brian celebrates over 25 years of sharing his body art expertise with his clients, colleagues and friends. He specializes in body piercing, safety standards, sterilization and infection control and prevention, and is an authorized dealer for the SciCan family of products. He offers expert mentorship and education for Body Art Professionals. As a long time member of ASTM International and the Association of Professional Piercers, he collaborates in the development, interpretation and publication of evidence based standards for continual improvement in the field.
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Lecture: Needles: The cutting edge
How to make needles work for optimal accuracy using bevel geometry and shaping techniques.
In this class, you will find piercers that have pushed a haystack worth of needles, who will demonstrate how to use the needle’s cutting edge to improve safety, control, and accuracy.
We will discuss how the cutting surfaces can be manipulated simply to determine the way jewelry will rest in piercings.
Straight piercing can result in a variety of angles depending on the plastic nature of the tissue and the approach to penetration and exit.
I’m pleased to have given this class on needle control, together with my esteemed colleague Luis Garcia, at the 2014 APP conference. We have both gotten positive feedback from our previous courses in response to our methods of working with controlling the needle bevel and wound shaping to get optimally angled results for different kinds of piercings.
We proposed this subject because we want to make these techniques simple and easy to understand, and believe they will be helpful for everyone. In particular, piercers with experience who are still finding they could be more precise with certain placements like the septum or Triple Forward Helix, and newer piercers could benefit from the practical examples of how we use the cutting form of the needle for accuracy.
We’ll also discuss theory behind needle designs and what we recognize as important to getting from point A to point B with precision while minimizing trauma.
I think you’ll find this class engaging and useful in your daily practice.