This review is from: Wrecking Balm Tattoo Removal & Fade System (Health and Beauty)
Eventually I got more serious about it and purchased a couple refill kits (since my original bottle of abrasive liquid was 2/3 used up at that point), planning on really giving this a go. I started using the abrasion head more firmly on my skin, and the abrasive part came off the plastic. It is glued on there, and I think the way it is designed, or the type of glue they are using causes it to come off if too much pressure is used. I looked up the wrecking balm company online and emailed them. To their credit they responded quickly to my email and sent me 4 new abrasion heads to make up for the two that had self destructed. Since then I have gone through two more, and imagine I will have to contact them again for more abrasion heads before I am done using what is left of the abrasion liquid. Which brings me to point #2, which is that you should not purchase this product if that would annoy you.
I started using the wrecking balm system more consistently (although not perfectly) and started to notice some more significant fading after about 4 months. You should note that in the beginning I saw no results at all. It takes time to wear down the surface of skin covering the tattoo, and I would not press super hard. I am pretty sure that is why another reviewer got darkened skin. You need to have a great deal of patience with this system, and use a medium pressure, fully expecting to not see any changes at all for months. My tattoo is about two inches tall and 1 inch wide. I am expecting to go through most of the refills I purchased. If your tattoo is bigger, plan on buying more refills to handle that.
Right now the bottom half of the tattoo seems to be fading faster. I am not sure if that is because that is where I put more pressure while sanding on it. Probably. The black lines are going faster than the colors, interestingly enough. Certainly I still have a long way to go, but I am now optimistic since I am seeing some results.
I would imagine that your results will depend on how deep your tattoo is in your skin. If it is very superficial, I would imagine you might see really quick results, and if it is deeper, you might have to work on this for a year or maybe more. Another reviewer noted that you could get it removed by a doctor for a few hundred bucks. I haven't heard of this, but will need to check into that. It would be worth it, if there is no scarring. But I think it's likely, if you don't want scarring, you'd have to pay a significant amount for laser removal. That makes this system worth the pain it is (from a money saving stand point).
I will continue to use the system, and if I ever manage to get the tattoo to completely disappear, I will update this review. I gave the system 2 stars because it is working. The removal of 3 stars is for the poorly designed abrasion head. I did not deduct any stars for the length of time it takes because I fully expected that. Tattoos are designed to be permanent, not easy to remove. Any system that can remove a tattoo without causing ugly scarring deserves some credit.
One last note - I did not have a problem with the pain factor of the abrasion head. Imagine using sandpaper and scrubbing at your skin for 45 seconds. It's probably not as bad as that would be. It was a little more agitating in the beginning, but I just skipped a few days and started up again, and my skin seemed to handle it better at that point. Now I don't have any agitated skin at all. I seem to handle it just fine. I would not do as another reviewer suggested and use anything to sand it down (such as regular sandpaper). Those products are not designed to be sanitary for the skin, they are designed for construction purposes. I would worry about infection in that case. If you do want to try something other than this system to cause abrasion, make sure it won't infect you, and that you can clean it out thoroughly after each use. I don't use the lotion that comes with the system, and have noticed no problems with healing. I basically use the system before I get in the shower, and then scrub the oil off my skin with basic soap. Seems to work just fine. Maintenance of the abrasion head is easy. Just put some liquid soap on it and wash the oily residue off.
Edit on 8/4/12:
I recently contacted Wrecking Balm for some more abrasion head replacements and was informed I could no longer get any free replacements. I am now required to buy my replacements. (I'm not sure how much those cost since I deleted the email in anger - sorry for the inability to give you any info on that). Apparently 4 replacement heads is the max they will give to people. Since they have a defective product and are unwilling to make a change to their product so that it does not fall apart in the middle of use (and are apparently unwilling to give folks replacements to make up for their defective product) I have lowered my rating of this product from two stars to one. If I could give them zero stars I would. Their comment in their email was that if I used less of the liquid, the abrasion head would last longer. I have gone through months of using less liquid because I was trying to be cheap and stretch the product for as long as possible, and still the abrasion heads fall apart. That comment is ridiculous, and simply a company trying to get out of being responsible. They should be ashamed of themselves. Honestly, I think this decision is really stupid. Someone could easily sue their asses off for millions, and they could easily avoid that by simply sending these cheap, made in china, abrasion heads. But I am not the CEO of this company. If I was, I would have had the problem fixed, and new improved abrasion heads sent to every one who needed them. I can now no longer give any kind of recommendation to buy this product. AVOID!
***Edit on 3-12-13***
Recently I found a government document on laser tattoo removal. It had a lot of great information in it. I would provide the link here, but Amazon tends to delete links in reviews, so you'll have to Google it if you want to read it. Copy and paste the keywords "PMCID: PMC2884836" and you will find the article. It is called "Lasers in Plastic Surgery" by Eric F. Bernstein, MD. For those who don't want to read a long article, the basic summary of the article is that the Q-switched lasers are the best right now for tattoo removal. I did a search for "Q-switched Alexandrite" (best for the color green) and "Oregon" since that is where I live and found two results. The first business only had one of the Q-switched lasers and stated on their site that it was difficult to remove the color green. If I hadn't read the article, I would not have known that there is a Q-switched laser that does much better for green. So I contacted the other which wound up being Oregon Health Sciences University. They provide tattoo removal at that university. They also have two different kind of Q-switched lasers. I made an appointment to talk to someone since I was told that they were currently having a free consultation deal (normally $90). I found the consultation to be informative. She confirmed what the article stated about surgery causing a scar. She expanded on it by saying that if you have a tattoo that is the size of a quarter they will have to cut a scar that is 3x the length of that quarter in order to tie the pieces of skin together. Additionally, if you have a tattoo that is at a bend somewhere, the stretching will cause that scar to expand in width. I told her I had been using the Wrecking Balm and had seen some erosion of the coloring but that it was taking forever. She said that that type of system could fade the colors only if the tattoo had not gone deep into a deeper level of the epidermis. But if it had gone down into that deeper layer, she didn't think it would ever be able to fade the color. I considered the locations where I was seeing fading. It was the black outline of the tattoo, and in a couple of different spots for the color. It is possible that the tattoo artist didn't go as deep while sketching out the outline, and could have gone light on a few spots of color as well. If that was the case, then I could have been trying to use that system for a very long time and not seen much more improvement other than at those specific locations. I was very grateful that my tattoo was small because the treatment was very expensive. Small tattoos cost $250 per session, medium cost $400, and large tattoos cost $750+. She said that it takes most people 6-10 treatments to see significant fading and that there are sometimes tiny spots that never will want to fade (color is too deep for the laser to reach it) and that there also might be tiny spots of scarring (she said she had never seen large amounts of scarring, just tiny spots), there was also a slight potential for discoloration, and that there also was a chance that the tattoo would just not fade to the degree that it would satisfy the customer. This basically means that if you decided laser was the way to go (and if OHSU is charging a standard amount compared to the rest of the country) that you should budget about ($1500-$2500 for a small tattoo removal). I also asked if the amount of fading I had done already would help reduce the number of sessions I would have to pay for and she said no. That the color was deep in there and that the laser would affect it the same as if I had not been sanding at it forever. I decided to try a treatment and it did not take very long. Perhaps 10 minutes? It did hurt. It has been a long time since I got my tattoo, but based on a shaky memory, I think it hurt more than it did to get my tattoo. She started off by hitting the laser on my skin once to see how it took, and also to let me see if I could handle the pain. I thought it wasn't too bad, but then when she got going it was like sharp snaps one after the other. I had to grit my teeth to handle it and then after a minute I asked for the ice treatment she had mentioned. It's basically a roller that numbs the area to make the laser more bearable. At first the ice seemed so intense it was almost not worth it. But then my skin must have started numbing up enough and it helped a little. It still hurt. Fortunately, there was only a minor irritation I had to deal with after the treatment for the rest of the day. I'll have to keep the tattoo covered in petroleum and a gauze pad for a few days and then in 4-6 weeks I can think if I want to get another treatment. I'll have to see how much the tattoo has faded by then.
My belief is that if you have a very superficial tattoo, Wrecking Balm might be able to help you. I would not spend money on the refills, though. If one of your abrasion heads falls apart, pull the foam backing off, use a tissue with some rubbing alcohol on it to remove the residual adhesive on both the plastic base and the back of the sand paper part, and then use a very tough glue (I think I used gorilla glue) to glue the pad back on. The thing with gorilla glue is it expands when it dries. I think I tried to fill the well 50% and then just let the thing expand higher. I should have kept an eye on it because it expanded with one side higher than the other, but it still worked. I didn't have a problem washing it with soap and water for a month before I decided to go the laser route. You might want to buy an oil (that is hygienic for your skin) to go with it if you don't get a refill kit.
If, on the other hand, you got yours professionally tattooed, I think it's likely that a majority of the tattoo is probably deep enough that this system will do very little for you. There may be some small spots that didn't go deep and those may eventually fade over the course of many months of effort, but it won't be worth it. Your other options are surgical (scarring) or paying a ton of money to get laser. If you do the laser, use the article to find out which Q-switched lasers are best for the colors in your tattoo, and then Google search for providers in your state that have those lasers. If they don't have the lasers you need, I personally don't see the point in giving them all of that money for leaving one or two colors behind.
Travelling is my life
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