I’m sure that most people assume that this post is about tattoo’s, however, it is not. There are much more … painful ways to get decorated than tattoo’s, and this post is about one of those ways. Branding.
There are many ways to brand, strike branding will probably be the most familiar, and it is used on cattle. However the method I am refering to is cautery branding, this is when someone uses a cautery iron (a pen like instrument with a nib that heats up to a very high temperature) to “draw” the design on.
I’ve known for a while that I wanted to get something like this done, though I didn’t know what design I wanted, or where I wanted it. However, then I remembered I had rather a lot of tattoo images on my computer from a LAN party some time ago, courtesy of PoD. I had a look through to find any designs I liked, on top of that they also had to be monochrome, since with branding skin can either be burned or not burned.
Well, I found a few images that I liked, but I did have a favourite, here it is.
The aspect ratio of the design (ie: the height compared to the width) is quite high, therefore the design lends itself to a limb. I decided that I would like it on my right forearm.
OK, so I had a design and I knew where I wanted it, but where would I get this performed? I only knew of one piercing/tattoo parlour in Manchester and I was pretty certain that they didn’t do the more extreme body mods. Well, that’s when I hit google and did a few searches, found a few articles on BMEzine pointing to a place in Manchester that sounded fairly decent. A place called Holier Than Thou.
Design, body part, torture chamber. I’m three for three. So on Monday this week it all happened, or rather, part of it did, but I’ll get to that later.
This is a snap I took of Louise all geared up (click to see higher resolution pics):
Then Louise took these two pics before and after the branding:
That’s all I got done, just those two sections. Why is this? Well it really fucking hurt is why. Not only that but you have to hold still, have you ever tried to hold still while someone is burning your arm? It’s not easy. Finally, yes, I am a wimp, my pain threshold is so very very low. However, I will be returning to have the other sections done, and eventually I want to have it all filled in as well. It’s gonna look awesome when it’s done. 😀
If you want to see the full size pics, I have uploaded those too and they can be found here:
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