A straight barbell is most popularly used in tongue piercings. The most common gauge used in tongue piercing is a 14 ga. In order to accommodate the swelling, the early length of the pierced body jewelry should be at least 3/4″. When the tongue rings piercing has become well, it can be replaced to a smaller barbell of 9/16″, or 14 mm, which is the most common size of tongue rings. It is recommended to wear a shorter barbell after the tongue piercing is healed.

Barbell tongue ring style of body jewelry is made of a straight bar and with a bead on each end, one or both beads unscrewable for replacement and/or changing of the beads. Either through epoxy or welding, often one of the beads is fixed, so that only one bead is used to install or remove the jewelry. Usually, there are only right-handed barbell threads.

There are roughly about 5 kinds of barbells for body jewelry. The internally threaded barbells are little bit more expensive than outer threaded barbells as there will be extra machining and labor included. At the time of piercing of the tongue rings, the internally threaded barbells cause less damage or irritation, so it is considered superior to externally threaded barbells. The bead in an internal threaded barbell has a receiving tube machine into it with a threaded post extending from the center, which mates with the threaded receiving tube on the bar.

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 receiving threads to be attached.

Named because of the curvature, curved barbells can also be known as a navel curve. It is mechanically identical to straight barbells except that they are curved. Curvature on a curved barbell tongue rings can range from about straight to circular, with some barbells actually being spiral, with the ends overlapping but departed to allow the insertion of the body jewelry. A variation on the curved barbell tongue ring design is a slightly curved barbell with a 90 degree bend near one end which is used in vertical navel piercings so the decorative end of the body jewelry is positioned more appropriately is called a J-bar. They can be either internally threaded or externally
threaded.
Circular barbell tongue rings, also famous as horseshoe barbell tongue rings are used in some types of piercings. They are named so due to their shape.

In all surface piercings, surface bars are used. In order to use these barbell tongue rings for surface piercing, they have a pair of 90 degree bends in the
same direction. Because of this design the pressure that would be affected by other body jewelry designs that interfere with the healing is minimized.

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