Last minute questions/double check, installer appointment made

Sorry if these are redundant questions,
I’m a big believer in RTFM if you don’t know enough
And you guys are the manual

Body mod is a new subject besides a couple small tattoos

Planning to install 3 chips in one go
That’s ok from what I read right? Figure if my hand is gunna be sore for a couple days, might as well be a bit more sore and get it all done at once

Installer is charging 200$ for all 3 installs
He says he normall charges 80 per, I kinda felt like it he price should be lower since your already set up to keep the party rolling.
Doesn’t have to be the best price, just making sure I’m not getting bent on it

Here are my planned locations

Position 0 will be a Xsiid green
Wrist will be a nEXT
Position 4? will be a xEM

Position 4 concerns me, kinda want knife edge, but don’t want it to be part of my hand that contacts a surface if I lean on my hands

Figure I can roll it onto the back of hand a bit, but then there are bones and stuff

I plan to wrap my hand in medical tape for a couple days, mostly to keep my idiot self from over using it and try to reduce some swelling, thoughts?

How do I make sure my installer knows what he’s doing? I’m personally not the most worried about it, but if I get an infection I won’t hear the end of it from my significant other

Any other tips or advice?

For what it is worth that is what I would do

I have been meaning to put together a post around the varied install costs.

I see @odaily answering, I will leave him to it, and fill in any gaps ( unlikely )

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Take some tylenonl / advil / whatever BEFORE the stabbing of the hand. It really throbs for awhile and you don’t want to try and open a painkiller bottle up with one hand and your teeth.

On a similar note, driving sucks with a bad hand. Get a ride if you can.

I paid 100 dollars for a single injection and still consider it money well spent. Dude knew his stuff and wan’t fumbling around at all. In-Out–Done.

I went for position 4 for my payment implant, in my right hand. Because I still hit things with my knife edge of my right, knowing I will likely put the ApexFlex in my L5 knife edge, and when payment is active on that, I will remove my current payment when it expires and either put in another flex in the same spot or put a new one into the R5.
Other than a couple of really good wacks I have given my R4 position, and some pressure and scales reaching into small tight spaces, I find it quite convenient and mostly out of the way.

Send him or take with you all the GOOD info.
ie.

https://forum.dangerousthings.com/uploads/short-url/jGSs2UrYyDxTxaHwVIfb3nWbsd9.pdf

Find some more install videos that you are happy with

Visit the place and look around. This isn’t a perfect test, but it’ll identify some of the worst.

For ex. the place I used. If it hadn’t been for the grinning skulls artwork and the pinup girls and such plastered all over the place it could have passed as a doctors office or high end realty / lawyers office.

Neat, clean, well lit. Furnishings were not heavily worn or soiled.

The guy I used had a room setup with everything he needed. Once again, neat, clean, well organized. The way he went about his business just felt like he had his act together. In a word, competent.

You should be able to get a feel for the place, and if it feels like a low rent bar or a thrift shop in there, make an excuse to leave and don’t come back.

This is exactly what I was looking for, to know if the guy is doing it right

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My body piercer charges $50 per but I have been going to him for years and we are friends. I will say he was super impressed by the kit and how complete it was.

His normal price for an implant where he provides everything is $200. When he saw the kit he laughed and said there was no way he could charge me that since I provided everything. Long story short $67 per is a great price.

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That is more about his experience, so take a look at his work - what has he done so far? Has he only done piercings, or maybe even implants? How long does he do his job? If he is an experienced piercer, he should know enough about the human anatomy to get that done fine, and he should be able to help if anything goes wrong during the healing process. If he’s a bodmod-artist who has done silicone implants before, even better - they are much more difficult to install, and they are often placed on the hands, so he will really know what he’s doing.

This one is more about his working area, and here, the same rules apply like for searching for a good piercer / tattooist / modder. The public area should be neat and clean. No animals allowed, no smoking indoors. The piercing- / modding-room itself should be reeeeeally clean, and, more important, easy to clean as well. You should be able to take a look at the way they sterilize their stuff, and everything should be opened just before your eyes and placed on a sterile (!) surface. Take a look at how your artist handles / avoids cross-contamination.

And then there is this little stuff I usually put in the back of my brain, and if there is too much of it, I grow sceptical - modding minors (no-go here in germany), being able to do a lot of stuff without an appointment, allowing accompanying persons in the piercing room (a no-go everywhere I go, but I know it’s handled differently in other countries), not letting you sign papers before where you have to confirm you know about risks and aftercare… all that stuff. Your piercer is not necessarily bad when this happens, but it’d make me think a little.

Oh, and just a little addition - the infection can happen because of your aftercare (or the lack of it), too - it’s very often not the installers fault :wink:

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Pricing is tough and it varies so much.

One part of KSECs mission is to get standardised pricing … Getting installers to agree to lower rates isnt easy and not everyone is willing to do so.

When installing at defcon the installation was free but built into the price. It would be good to see $40 for a single implant but when an installer does one once in a blue moon …

This the UK pricing but you get the idea …

One thing I will say … Always go with a professional.

You will get the argument that “its a quick install so can be done yourself”. Doesn’t mean there can’t be issues and it massively increases the risk of it going wrong. Otherwise you could say anyone can do their own piercings for instance and not pay a professional …

That’s a difficult one in the bodymod-world, I guess^^
And to be honest, I’m not all into that. My artist charges quite a bit more than what’s on your list (at least for my flexNExT, dunno about injectables), and I don’t care at all - simply because I know he’s doing a great job and has to pay a rent. I’m totally happy with everything he does to me, so I’m willing to pay more, simply because - he’s good :smiley: (yeah, and I trust him, like him a lot and just take this as a “wellness trip”^^)
I honestly never think about pricing for any of my mods - if it’s a bit more expensive, I’ll wait a month or two until I get enough money together, but I go to the people I trust (so they can maintain their studios and I can keep on going there…) and not to those who charge maybe a bit less.

Similar thing with tattoos - there are artists that charge around 100 € per hour, and others who take 450+ € per hour. Quite a difference, and still, I’d say if you want a tattoo from the expensive guy, simply because he’s great and you like his style - go for it^^

Injectables are one thing but flexs are a different ball game here in the UK. Many are travelling abroad now because of the UK law instead of having them done here.

It’s about what’s fair but end of the day is the customer is happy is as important. Some small differences in price are here or there… We’ve had people been attempted to charge near £200 for an injectable in the UK which made me angry as its ridiculous.

Also tattoos are on a different scale of importance compared to installations and I totally back “you get what you pay for” with this.

KSEC specially offers and provides a lot to each Cyborg Center for free but that’s another story. In return we want to make sure every customer is treated the same regardless of location here in the UK. This is also a requirement of our online stores booking system as you can buy an installation at any applicable center alongside an implant with a discount.

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Totally with you on that point!
I absolutely agree that prices have to be reasonable, of course…
I’m just a little “thin-skinned” on all kind of price discussions, simply because I far too often hear things like “why do you pay 50,- for a piercing, my jewelry shop shoots them for 10,-” or such, and that reeeeeally triggers me by now :wink:

That’s a fine one, because it takes regional differences between the countries in consideration. And it’s absolutely possible to get at least similar pricing between artists if you stay in the same country, it just gets difficult when you start to compare between different countries as well…

Might not be up to date, but as far as I know, bodymodding is pretty completely banned in the UK now, isn’t it?

This I can agree on. We’re building a partner network that offers the same everywhere and stops any overpricing. It’s not a price race to the lowest and some do offer cheaper in the UK… mainly because they want to undercut or are just happy with lower pricing. People will go where people go at the end of the day.

But as always … Whatever the customer feels suits them best will always prevail.

Oh yeah we’re aware … We only have standardised pricing for the UK currently because of this. We’re looking to roll out our platform of offerings to other countries but only when we have enough installers within one area for it to make sense. Been a tough one for sure but as things grow… We’re based in the UK and have a good amount of installers here.

After Mac (Dr Evil) was sentenced it sent ripples through the industry. No laws were then changed and people still perform body mod work but a lot have cut down on this. No pun intended haha.

Yeah, heard a bit about that one… really a shame what they did to him. Still don’t understand what’s their freakin’ problem as long as he did a good job to consenting customers -.- Makes me angry that artists have to perform in a “legally grey” area (or do straight illegal stuff aka injecting anaesthetics) simply to make adult people who consciously decide to change their bodies happy…
Are there any ways to support the community over there? Any petitions, political stuff going on, anything? I’d just like to do something against those restrictions…

I hope that higher numbers of (failed) self installs will change the right peoples minds, so they legalize everything needed.
And I know for a fact that some people in the UK do the scalpel work themselves now…

EDIT: I know how dark this thought is btw. But it is what it is.

That would be great, but… I’m honestly afraid that, with more self-installs failing, people rather tend to say “this is ALL so dangerous! this should never be legal at all!”…
I think it would be best to create a solid legal base for everything body-mody in a way - that is, clear requirements for the professionals (considering hygiene and knowledge), the possibility to get training in some medical practices (and after that, for example the permission to work with s.c. anaesthetics), and even the “body modification artist” as a recognized apprenticeship. So there would be clear rules and it’d be easy to say if something someone does is absolutely okay or not. No more legally grey stuff. And a law that clearly states that a person can get done to his / her / its body whatever he / she / it wants, of course; so that every ever-so-experimental mod would be okay.

Sigh… yeeeees, and that’s not such a good idea at all. Might work, but… nah.

replying…

I waited 5 minutes. Finally!

Yes, this 100%.
I just think it might happen if some bad stuff happens, so someone sees themself as the hero that protects the young biohackers.

Ofcourse we should actively fight for it tho’.

Do you think of a petition or something like that?

Letters to some politicans might help.
I assume that would be the best thing one could do.
The more I think of it the better it sounds:
“This guy from germany sent me a letter so we change some minor laws to protect local cyborgs…”

I know.
Fly somewhere else.
Germany doesn’t have lido but some decent scalpel artists, I think sweden does have lido?
I mean, a nice weekend trip and coming back with augmentations is a cool story!

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Yeah, sorry - still have to search up some english words… hell, never knew that there was some word like “recognized apprenticeship”… :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, kinda - I think a lot of things going wrong between the bodymod-society and politicians is because of the fact that there is no real lobby, no “united voice” for the first one. In the eyes of most people, it’s just a bunch of freaks they don’t care about or they are frightened by, simply because they know too little about all that.
But I’m completely clueless on how to do something like that - I mean, I can (and maybe will) write letters to some politicians, but whom should I address? Health department? I have no idea, honestly^^

Sounds great :smiley:

And that’s why I’m extremely happy to live here - I jump on a train, and 2 hours later I’m with a really great artist who works with scalpels and other strange stuff :wink:

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There was before he was sentenced. Massive shame indeed as they actually said he work was extremely well done.

Being called “Dr Evil” did not work in his favor.

Yes it not a good situation. This is why we’re pushing hard to create a bigger and better professional network which has standardised pricing.

The issue is the regulations per council are very different. Some only have guidance for only ear piercings and the rest is in a grey zone.

The law needs to catch up for sure.

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