Before converting the dining room into a bondage fetish workshop, I decided that I would design with a few principles in mind:
- The lock had to be safe (obviously!) and fail-safe too. There's loads of references to what 'fail-safe' means on here, so don't need to explain this one!
- The lock design could be as crude as possible and didn't have to look visually like any kind of final product, since I was trying to prototype some ideas
- The lock had to be constructed from every day items you find around the home, ideally
- The lock had to of course be strong enough to withstand a brute-force attack when frozen (in other words, I didn't want the lock to be breakable merely by just pulling on it using brute strength for e.g. 1 or 2 minutes)
- The lock had to be easy to freeze - this one is surprisingly tricky, especially if you want the ice to be frozen in a certain way or shape. Anyone who has tried, you will know what I mean
- The lock's thaw time had to be fairly predictable/controllable, i.e. always take the same time to melt, give or take 10 minutes, or some reasonable deviation like this.
The problem I had last time was not being able to freeze the ice inside the tube (guitar slide), which didn't have an end on and the water just escaped. I realised that I only need to be able to freeze e.g. 2 non-connected chains (or wire, cord etc...) inside a tube, which would be sufficient, plus any pulling apart, sheer forces on the chains would be pulling against the inside walls of the tube. Hence, the idea was born.
Now, down to business on the design. I had some links of chain (see photo 1) which I hoped to freeze inside the tube and on the ends of them some welded D-rings (Ok, so these were not 'lying around the house', I actually had these from another project...! Maybe more on that later... ;o) ) but in theory you could use any old metal rings, like a keyring, for instance. I used pliers to open and close the chain.
Having done some initial tests on freezing chains inside ice, I realised that this might be the way forward, in general, compared to something like a piece of wire or a metal bolt of some kind, since chains are strong they can offer some movement and when frozen and pulled only the melted links will start to pull on the rest of the chain, while the end part is still frozen solid.
I think I read somewhere on here that you don't need much water for an ice lock, especially if you can control the melting rate. This lead to the need for some kind of insulation on the metal tube. I used some bubble wrap, small plastic bags and finally gaffer tape. I gave the lock more than 10 hours in the freezer, but it was pretty solid after about 4 or 5.
I tested the lock out as a dry run with some small weight, just to get an idea of how long it would take to melt. It seemed to last a good 30-40 minutes. So I decided to give it a try for real. It was solid for about 5 minutes, but then failed miserably and in a way which wasn't 'linear' or predictable. Conclusion - back to the 'workshop'! It turns out that I would be needing a lock which would stay frozen for longer, in general, since I used it in a real SB session and after 20-30 minutes of 'getting ready' the ice had already started to thaw, so much so that the lock pretty much broke after a few minutes of being cuffed in it. A disappointment.
Despite the failure I thought I would share the design/idea anyway, as I did find out some useful things along the way, which have since inspired future designs.
- A surprisingly small amount of ice is very strong
- Metal in contact with ice seems to not be the best combination and heat can easily be conducted to the ice, melting it quicker. For this reason, one should wear, or be forced to wear ;o) gloves when using the lock
- I read somewhere if you mix in cotton wool into the freezing water, it magically hardens the ice. Don't know the physics, but I guess the water molecules have something to hold onto to keep in formation...or something? I was searching our bathroom for my gf's cotton pads she uses to take off makeup, which seemed like they'd do the job if shredded up, but couldn't find any, so couldn't test the theory this time.
- Having the two fixed points (e.g. the D-rings) at the same end of the tube might be better than at opposing ends of such a tube. For one reason, cuffed hands would be closer together and therefore more restrictive
- A lock of this type could be used e.g. on the bed, where the ice was out of reach and therefore one wouldn't be able to make the ice melt any faster by touching it (as seems to be a classic 'problem'!)
Thoughts, feedback and ideas welcomed, but I'll be posting the other designs soon for your kinky entertainment! MS