I’ve had a nostril piercing for a few years now. I have worn the same stud for a year or so and just bought a new one. I compared them before I bought it. The ball on the end is the same size as the one I’ve got now, but I can’t get this one in. It goes in the outside just fine, but stops at the inside skin as if there is no hole there. I’ve tried wiggling it around, tilting, and just pushing, to no effect. I tried the new one immediately after removing the old one, so there’s no possibility of closing. I can put the old one back in with no problems. Help?
Thanks!
Probably just not lining up quite right- I have that problem with my navel ring sometimes, and it takes ages to find the hole. Maybe the curve is slightly different on the new one?
There’s no curve- it’s just a straight bar with a flower on one side and a ball on the other.
What do you do to get yours in when it’s not working?
Sounds like the post on the new stud is too short. Compare the length of the posts on the old and new studs - are they the same?
Since there really isn’t a “correct answer” to the OP, let’s move to IMHO.
samclem, Moderator
Can you get it through from the other direction?
The new one is slightly longer then the current. When I put it in, I can feel with my finger on the inside the end poking around and just not going through.
I disagree that this is IMHO. I’m looking for a factual answer for how to get this to work, not opinons about whether it will look nice.
The angle is such that I can’t get to the hole from the inside. I don’t know if that would work.
I’m not sure what to tell you that you haven’t already tried. If you have a dental mirror, you might be able to see whether the ball is actually lined up, giving you the confidence to then just push it through.
My piercer will change jewelry for me for $5, maybe you could go that route. I wear two captive bead rings in my left nostril and don’t have the instrument to get the beads in, so I have him do it for me (once a year or so). Last time I gave him some advice about his cats and he didn’t charge me.
Are the balls on the end the exact same shape? Like, is the old one pointier, while the new one is blunter? I think I had that happen to me once with my nose ring. It’s possible that I had gone without one too long and the hole started closing up, but I do remember having a new stud that was more blunt and needing to work extra hard to get it in.
(That’s what she said.)
Something I’ve noticed (that surpriused me!) is that the ball or whatever on the end can be the exact same size – such that the ball ends are interchangeable between the two – and yet the studs themselves can still be a different gauge; i.e., one is just a little bit thicker or thinner than the other.
Even one size bigger can be simply impossible to put through your existing piercing. This happened to me with a nose ring, a horseshoe actually. It was too big to go through my piercing, yet I was able to use the ball end on the nose ring that did fit. I guess they’re all threaded the same size – ha ha, good to know some things are actually standardized, even if it’s not something useful like laptop power supplies. 
Some pics of the jewellery may help.
I had a (poorly done) piercing that always caused trouble. Eventually I learned that I just had to sort of swivel it around in completely illogical directions until I found the correct route. Stabilizing the area by pressing my finger on it kept any stretching and/or misalignment to a minimum, and that helped.
Thank goodness when I just had the thing re-pierced!