Howdy! This’ll be a compilation post of the things I learned as I got a “Prince Albert” piercing, and the things I wish I had known earlier. There’s nothing earth-shattering here, and still, despite lots of Internet searches, I didn’t find all this information. One more place to find it at can’t hurt.
I’ll link to the jewelry and items I recommend. These are not affiliate links, I don’t get paid for them.
I’ll just link to what a Prince Albert piercing is.
Getting pierced, aftercare
Ask around about piercers in your general area with lots of experience doing genital piercings. You want them to have experience because mistakes are costly: If placed too close to your meatus (piss slit), the piercing can “migrate out”, that is, actually cut your dick open. The same can happen if the jewelry is too thin, the “cheese cutter” effect. PAs get pierced anywhere from 10ga to 6ga initially for this reason. Some people have had a permanent loss of erection from a piercing, likely because a blood vessel was nicked. Find someone who’s done these, a lot, and who gets stellar reviews from your community. If you don’t mind being around kinky people, ask on Fetlife. The people there will know.
That said, the PA is one of the fastest-healing piercings you can get. Initial healing shouldn’t take longer than 4-6 weeks. You can likely have sex within 3 to 4 weeks after the piercing. Listen to your body. If there’s any pain, stop, do something else. Oh, and if you’re allowed to, cum before you get pierced, because you won’t again for a few weeks while this heals.
The piercing will continue to heal and toughen for a year or so. You’ll know when you’ve reached that stage because you’ll be able to pull on the piercing to where your dick stretches out, and not feel any discomfort during or afterward. Do not try that with small-gauge jewelry, I implore you – “cheese cutter” effect be real, yo.
What to bring:
Clean underwear
Maxipads
Change of underwear and more maxipads, just in case
You should be well hydrated and have had a meal
Lay in supplies at home. Gauze rolls, and saline wound wash for wound care. You can get both at any pharmacy.
Choose the gauge you’ll get pierced at. My recommendation is to have this pierced at the largest gauge your piercer is comfortable with. 8ga is good, 6ga might be better. A larger piercing bleeds more, but heals more rapidly. It’s also less likely to be uncomfortable during sexual activity, because of the larger surface area of the jewelry.
Choose your initial jewelry. My recommendation is a titanium curved barbell. It won’t snag on anything, works well with or without a foreskin, and the titanium is lightweight and won’t trigger any skin reactions.
Don’t use blood thinners. No aspirin. If you are on blood thinners for medical reasons, don’t get pierced. Ibuprofen, if you can tolerate it, may help with avoiding inflammation after.
This’ll bleed. Potentially a lot. The bleeding should stop almost completely within 12 hours or so. Don’t get too freaked out by that.
My piercer recommended rinsing with saline wound wash twice a day but recommended against soaking, unlike much of the literature you find online. He says soaking will puff up the flesh and delay healing. Sounded legitimate to me, and rinsing was sufficient in my case to ensure the piercing healed cleanly. Be religious about the twice-daily rinse. If there’s ANY inflammation, see your piercer or a doctor. There shouldn’t be inflammation and you’d be risking damage to your dick if you don’t treat it, all the way up to the piercing cutting it apart – migrating.
Jewelry options
This is one of the things I wish I had known earlier. You can get large balls with medium-gauge jewelry, but there’s only one vendor who offers that to the best of my knowledge.
It’s possible for the ball at the top of your dick to drop into your meatus – your piss slit – during sexual activity. That is not fun. The jewelry will hang out the bottom hole. Looks bad, can snag on your partner if you’re penetrating someone, and can freak your partner out.
The obvious option is to get a larger ball. With most shops, large balls come with larger-gauge jewelry. As a result, I was in a hurry to stretch, and let me tell you, no bueno.
Solution: Buy stainless steel jewelry from Body Circle Designs, once your piercing has healed. The largest end balls they can offer for 8ga are 3/8″, but from 6ga on, they’ll size you up to 1″. 1″ is heavy and impractical, but 1/2″ or 5/8″ might be the size you need.
I guessed at the size of my urethra and bought increasingly larger balls until I found one that wouldn’t slip in – 5/8″ in my case. That’ll work, but there’s another way.
You can order a set of “Hegar Urethral Sounds“, which are stainless steel rods you insert into your dick. That’ll allow you to get the size of your urethra to the mm, which is good enough for these purposes. There are many places to buy these, the one I linked is one I trust and where the reviews spoke of good quality. You want these to be highly polished and not have any scrapey bits.
When you insert anything into your dick, you want it to be as clean and sterile as possible. UTIs – Urinary Tract Infections – are an absolute bitch, and you don’t want one. Lay in a supply of antiseptic towelettes and sterile lube. Unless you’re into urethral insertion play, these will last you for years.
The two materials I’d consider for dick jewelry are 316LVM stainless steel and “implant-grade” titanium. LVM is “Low Carbon” and “Vaccum Arc Remelted”, which means there are less air-borne contaminants in the metal. Both are hypoallergenic, that is not about to cause an allergic reaction, titanium a little more so.
Stainless steel is heavier and this can work for you once your piercing is fully healed. You may enjoy the feel of heavier jewelry, you may also be hoping for a “natural stretch” effect through the weight.
For shapes, you have three basic ones: Curved barbell, ring, and circular barbell. The circular barbell looks like a horseshoe.
Then there’s also the “Prince’s Wand“, which is a rod that goes into your urethra, with a pin screwing into it via your piercing. That’s a somewhat less common choice, and a lot of guys wear it only for play, not 24/7. It can be worn 23/6, though I have yet to learn how.
Circular barbells by their nature don’t work well if you need larger end balls. They also don’t work that well if you have your foreskin, because they’ll just hang out the top of your dick, with the bottom ball covered by your foreskin. That said, they’re a popular option.
Curved barbells are excellent for allowing a piercing to heal – either initially or after a stretch. They don’t get in the way, and they’re not so heavy that they’ll irritate and inflame the piercing. They also can take any size ball, which makes them a great choice for people with a wider urethra.
Rings come as segment rings, captive bead, or screw-on ball. Both segment rings and captive bead need some serious hardware to put in and out. Screw-on ball isn’t continuous / seamless, but needs no tools. If you do go the segment ring or captive bead route, invest in ring opening pliers, a ball grabber, and some ring closing pliers.
The Internet tells me that a curved barbell with a large ball on top is best for pleasing your partner during penetrative sex, and I have no reason to doubt that. 2ga is the recommended minimum jewelry size for that use.
Stretching
This is the bit I really wish I had known more about initially. You have to take this slow, or else you’ll have inflammation, or a blowout. I was in an awful hurry, and I get how hot it is to go up a size. Don’t be in the same hurry I was. If you need larger end balls, read the previous bit about jewelry: You can get those without increasing the gauge of your jewelry.
Emu Oil comes recommended to increase the elasticity of your skin before a stretch. I haven’t tried that, but it sounds like a good idea. Massage into the skin around your piercing for 1 to 2 weeks before you attempt to stretch.
Your piercing has to be fully healed. Your first stretch shouldn’t come any earlier than 4 months after the initial piercing, and after each stretch, you want to allow another 3 to 4 months for it to heal.
Only stretch “one size up”, never more. 8ga to 6ga. Wait for it to heal completely. 6ga to 4ga. Wait for it to heal completely. And so on to 2ga, 0ga, 00ga, and beyond that if desired.
I’ve stretched to 0ga using tapers, and the biggest stretch, from 2ga to 0ga, was actually the easiest, because it was the one where I did it right and took it slow.
Here’s what you’ll want:
A threaded taper. You want the jewelry to follow right through. Don’t get unthreaded.
A curved barbell. It’s the type of jewelry that will irritate your freshly stretched piercing the least. That’s my experience at least. If you need a larger ball on top, buy one to match.
If you don’t have them already, lay in a supply of antiseptic towelettes and sterile lube.
Did I mention to take it slow? Clean the taper. Lube the taper and your piercing. Insert, let gravity do its thing. Maybe push on the taper very, very gently. If there’s a slight pinching sensation, stop, wait a few minutes, see whether it’ll subside. If it gets uncomfortable, pull the taper back out, relube, wait a bit, try again.
After a while, pushing the taper will go from “this pinches a bit” to “this hurts”. At that point, stop. Put the jewelry back in. Wait a few days, make sure there is no discomfort remaining whatsoever. Then try again.
Do not breathe through pain. I thought I was safe to do that, and I wasn’t. It’s okay if it takes months to stretch. Going from 2ga to 0ga took me one and a half years, with me trying the taper every month or two.
Heavy jewelry can inflame your stretched tissue, and if you leave that be and hope it’ll heal on its own: It won’t. You’ll need to step down a size or two, use saline spray again, wait for it to heal, and stretch back up again. A gentle stretch and curved barbell is your best bet to avoid this issue. You may also want to have titanium jewelry on hand, it is lighter and won’t irritate your piercing.
Size matters
The inside diameter of your jewelry is something you’ll need to discover through some trial and error. Go with the recommendation of your piercer at first, and then see from there. Keep in mind that larger gauges take up more space: An 8ga 1″ ring may be just fine, where a 2ga 1″ ring will irritate the back of your meatus because you have an extra 6mm of material beyond the inner diameter. I dropped from an initial 1″ 8ga ring to 3/4″ 2ga jewelry, and ordered a ring of 11/16″ once I got to 0ga.
You’ll determine how far you want to stretch. My recommendation is to stretch at least to where the jewelry is big enough that it’s completely comfortable. In my case, discomfort from sharp tugs at the piercing was almost completely gone at 6ga and completely gone at 4ga. 2ga, which I’ve seen recommended as the ideal size for penetrative sex, might be as far as you want to go, because the stretch to 0ga, by 1.5mm, is so large and daunting. Also consider the jewelry you’re interested in. Your choices dwindle as you increase the size of your piercing.
Steelwerks makes a locking curved hollow barbell, and I think the recommended size of 2ga is also the largest size he’ll make these at. Something to do with the difficulty of bending larger gauges.
Captive bead ring jewelry seems to top out at 2ga. I’ve seen Anatometal offer a segment ring at 0ga, but that’s special order from your piercing shop, not available online anywhere I looked.
Screw-on ball rings come as large as 00ga in Titanium or steel from Anatometal, and up to 3/4″ (yikes) in steel from Chain Gang.
A segment ring that connects two halves with a pin and screw is available in steel up to 5/8″ from Chain Gang.
A Prince Albert Wand can be had in really large sizes, up to 5/8″. Chain Gang, again, offer some more affordable options. If you get a wand, make sure the wand isn’t too short: If it pokes your urethra with its lower end, that’ll hurt. I know that a wand that extends into the body works, but is obviously only useful for short play. Something that stops just short of the body might work for longer, 23-hour / 6-day wear, but I haven’t tried that. If you have experience with that, please get in touch.
Barbells and tapers are available up to 1/2″. Maybe there’s larger, if so, I haven’t found them.
I’m not sure whether there are sizing limits to the pins that secure a chastity cage. Ask your manufacturer, likely Steelworxx or Steelwerks, before you stretch past 2ga.
If you’re in a committed relationship, I’d say check in with your partner. They might have an aesthetic preference. I’ve seen some fairly small dicks with really large jewelry, and that’s a startling look. Of course, if you think that’s really hot, and your partner does too, bonus!
Vendor links
These are the same links that are throughout the text, just organized for easier reference. There are many other vendors; choose the supplier that fits your aesthetics and budget.
Body Circle Design, large end balls
Stretching
Captive bead tools
Unusual or just unusually large jewelry
- Locking curved titanium barbell, “piss-through”. Steelwerks, up to 2ga. Also all kinds of chastity devices, anchored to a PA or not.
- Titanium screw-on ring, up to 00ga, by Anatometal. Can take up to 4 months to receive.
- Steel screw-on ring, 00ga to 3/4″, by Chain Gang.
- Steel circle ring up to 5/8″, by Chain Gang.
- Custom titanium PA wand, by Painful Pleasures.
- Long PA wand, by Chain Gang.
- Custom PA wands, with or without locks, by Steelwerks.
I had to stop reading at “cheese cutter!” Yikes!
Sorry. The warning is largely unnecessary because PAs get pierced at 10ga or 8ga initially, and the real danger is with gauges under 14ga, I read. Still, I’d rather warn folk not to put real force on a smaller gauge, even if the chance of something going that disastrously wrong is remote.
Around 6ga or 4ga, there shouldn’t be any discomfort from the piercing any more even when it’s tugged on sharply.
Standard gauge sizes are even numbers. Going from 2ga to 0ga is a challenge, but 1ga, while not as common as the even numbers, is widely available in both tapers and jewelry and makes the transition much easier. Just do a search and also check the online mega store.