Thanks to my friend Lisa I have been wearing long-term / permanent shackles for several months now. The cuffs come from a place in China and they have an integrated lock in the shackle. Without the key, they are difficult to remove. With metal epoxy in the locks, they likely would have to be cut off. The chain is bolted to the o-rings so it is removable, allowing for "normal' daily wear of the shackles.
I have been shackled many times by Lisa in the past, including house painting parties on two occasions and numerous Halloweens as staff extras for haunted houses in New Mexico when we both lived there. Now in Nevada, she invited me to join her friends last Halloween as the last member of a chain gang. I admit I was immediately intrigued to be chained by the ankles to 5 women for several days (with Halloween on Wednesday last year, there were parties scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well as Wednesday). Costumes for all were simple: orange prisoner jumpsuit, ankle shackles on bare feet linked to each other by a very long chain leaving about 4' between each of us. Having worn other types of heavy steel shackles before (other stories if anyone is interested), it was intriguing to see these with the integrated lock. Lisa showed me how to lock the shackles on with the O-ring connector and I was then entrusted with shackling her 4 friends feet. At one point she leaned over from behind and whispered in my ear, "I hope you don't think you're getting out of those anytime soon." I admit, knowing Lisa, I took her seriously and was a bit worried what she had in mind. I took the opportunity to kiss each girl's bare foot after locking the shackle on her ankle as an "apology" and wondered if they knew that they might be wearing these for awhile. Then the o-rings were linked by a length of chain which allowed for comfortable walking with a screw link tightened with a wrench. At this point all of us were shackled individually, but another screw link, this one hand tightened, joined each of us together by the o-rings on each of our right ankles. We had a great time and lots of jokes made.
After the Friday night party, the connecting chain was unbolted and Lisa had me disconnect the chains between our shackles. At that point she said "Goodnight" and immediately several of the girls asked about removing the shackles. Lisa laughed and said that we needed to get used to wearing them since we had several more days to wear them. Not much that any of us could do and Lisa kept hers in place also. i admit at this point I really had a bad feeling about this. Saturday we had two parties, an afternoon poolside costume party which was fun and then a later private party elsewhere. One of the girls asked if the cuffs would rust in the water, as we sat poolside dangling our feet in the water and Lisa explained they were made from stainless steel and so the cuffs would not rust, but she wasn't sure about the locks. We got a good chuckle about that and again I found myself wondering how long these cuffs would be on. The connecting chains between us were removed between parties, but the chains on the shackles were not, so we were shackled and barefoot about 12 hours that day. Of course, the cuffs had been locked on for about 36 hours by now.
Before the Sunday parties, again there were two, an afternoon costume barbecue and an evening one, as I had the "duty" of linking the girls' ankles shackles with the chains, Janella was talking about how she and Lisa had decided that they wanted to keep the ankle cuffs on permanently as "jewelry". Janella said she always wanted a chunky cuff anklet to match her toe rings and these fit the bill, so she and Lisa had used the method of "freezing" the locks on each of their shackles. Apparently they put metal epoxy into the locks and then using a small screwdriver jammed tinfoil so it wadded up inside the locks, effectively making the key unable to fit into the lock once the epoxy set. Lisa just winked as Janella was telling the story and then said to the rest of us three, "So don't anyone get drunk and pass out!" as a definite playful warning.
I must admit I like the feeling of being shackled and it was fun being chained to 4 girls. There were numerous instances of playing footsies over the days and opportunities for foot tickling and during one of the daytime parties Erika unlinked the connecting chain and braided it through all of the o-rings so that our feet were all linked together and nobody could move until it was undone which was more complicated that it looked! Meg did fall asleep during the Sunday night party and Lisa and Janella descended like vultures and I got to witness the "freezing" method. It was quite fast and as Lisa went back to her own drink, she giggled, "It doesn't matter if Meg wakes up now, there's no way to get those off." I don't think anybody bothered to tell her until after the last party on Wednesday because she said something about "too bad these cuffs are coming off tonight, I am starting to get used to them." Of course the rest of us just laughed and the look on her face was quite priceless when she learned she had gotten her "wish".
The chains were all unbolted and we stood there again, Shelly and I waiting to have our cuffs removed, or rather waiting to see what would happen next and Lisa again said "Goodnight" like all the previous nights. Shelly of course started to protest and Lisa laughed and pulled out two sets of keys. I actually had a moment of relief that the cuffs might come off, mixed with the disappointment that the cuffs might come off. Lisa went to Shelly's cuffs and fiddled with them for a moment and I saw that she had actually broken the keys off in the lock "by accident". Shelly didn't exactly notice at first in her slightly inebriated state and when she pressed to have them removed, Lisa held up the broken keys and said "Oops!" That left the four girls all with the shackles locked on their ankles and me wondering if i should let Lisa touch the ones locked on me!! Of course if she didn't they weren't coming off and if she did, then maybe they weren't coming off anyway. She waved the keys at me and jingled them quite obnoxiously. I decided to say nothing and she gleefully pounced, taking one foot in her hand and sticking the key in the lock. She looked up at me before turning the key and said, "I told you that you weren't getting out of these this time," and before i could react, she had snapped off the key in my lock like she had in Shelly's. I couldn't really protest when she did the other ankle as well. Later she told me that she had orchestrated the whole process of us not getting out of the cuffs in advance and that there was not chance from the moment they were first locked on. Each of the locks had a small dab of metal epoxy put into the locking part where the shackle connects before she passed them out and the keys were all filed down with a metal file so they would not work anyway. Each was cut part way through with a hacksaw so they would break off with any twisting pressure and with the wrong damaged key in the lock, they would be very long-term, requiring some level of cutting to ultimately remove.
Now it's been just over 8 months and the cuffs are still in place. Thankful that they look like extreme jewelry with the chain removed and have gotten several compliments on them. Lisa is talking about reuniting the chain gang for this coming Halloween.