For want of a rope
Posted: 28 Mar 2014, 05:18
So far, I've bought rope for self bondage play 3 different times, and each time I ended up buying something different.
First rope I bought was a silk rope from a sex toy store. Well over an inch in diameter, and only about 20 feet long, it really didn't suit my purposes very well. I'm one of the largest people I've met, so 20 feet isn't all that useful except around the arms and lower legs for me. I also found it was too smooth, allowing knots to slide alarmingly, and it frayed a lot. Also, very expensive, probably due to the inherent markup in sex products over vanilla purpose versions.
Second rope was a cotton rope, around half an inch in diameter and ~50 feet long. Longest the toy store had, but still not long enough to get that creative with a body as big as mine. It's smooth enough to not chafe unless you're struggling really hard, and yet rough enough to keep knots exactly where you put them. Would be ideal, but for the price - as with the silk rope, marked up due to the sex toy packaging - and the available lengths.
Third rope is one I got at a hardware store. Can't remember exactly what it was made from, but it's smoother than the cotton rope - so smooth that a "simple ring device" has no locking effect as it's supposed to. Came with plenty of length - 200', which is easily cut down to useful lengths, but the diameter's a bit ungainly. It's 3 strands of 3/8ths inch rope spun into a single strand, and splitting it down to the 3 strands quickly results in massive fraying unto uselessness.
So, now I'm thinking it'd be wiser to do some research rather than just going with my gut (recognizing that my gut feeling for rope design is insufficiently developed to be seen as useful advice).
So, separating the variables a bit, I have 3 questions:
1 - What diameter of rope do you guys like to work with? If you have more than one choice, when would you use one over the other?
2 - What length of rope do you like, and for what applications. (Lengths, I know, are going to vary a lot depending on if it's a full body tie like a karada or if it's a simple wrist or ankle cuff). It'd probably be more useful to list lengths as multiples of an appropriate body measure (20*wrist measurement for a wrist cuff, or 50* a waist measurement for a karada, etc), since body shapes vary so much, but that's up to you.
3 - What rope materials do you like to work with, and where can they be found (types of store (hardware, fabric, sailing supplies, etc) rather than specific locations (Home Hardware, Fabricland, the Binnacle), please, since this is international)? Also, why do you like them? (If you like the rope to feel rough and scratchy against your skin, or if it's nice and soft and comfortable, or...)
First rope I bought was a silk rope from a sex toy store. Well over an inch in diameter, and only about 20 feet long, it really didn't suit my purposes very well. I'm one of the largest people I've met, so 20 feet isn't all that useful except around the arms and lower legs for me. I also found it was too smooth, allowing knots to slide alarmingly, and it frayed a lot. Also, very expensive, probably due to the inherent markup in sex products over vanilla purpose versions.
Second rope was a cotton rope, around half an inch in diameter and ~50 feet long. Longest the toy store had, but still not long enough to get that creative with a body as big as mine. It's smooth enough to not chafe unless you're struggling really hard, and yet rough enough to keep knots exactly where you put them. Would be ideal, but for the price - as with the silk rope, marked up due to the sex toy packaging - and the available lengths.
Third rope is one I got at a hardware store. Can't remember exactly what it was made from, but it's smoother than the cotton rope - so smooth that a "simple ring device" has no locking effect as it's supposed to. Came with plenty of length - 200', which is easily cut down to useful lengths, but the diameter's a bit ungainly. It's 3 strands of 3/8ths inch rope spun into a single strand, and splitting it down to the 3 strands quickly results in massive fraying unto uselessness.
So, now I'm thinking it'd be wiser to do some research rather than just going with my gut (recognizing that my gut feeling for rope design is insufficiently developed to be seen as useful advice).
So, separating the variables a bit, I have 3 questions:
1 - What diameter of rope do you guys like to work with? If you have more than one choice, when would you use one over the other?
2 - What length of rope do you like, and for what applications. (Lengths, I know, are going to vary a lot depending on if it's a full body tie like a karada or if it's a simple wrist or ankle cuff). It'd probably be more useful to list lengths as multiples of an appropriate body measure (20*wrist measurement for a wrist cuff, or 50* a waist measurement for a karada, etc), since body shapes vary so much, but that's up to you.
3 - What rope materials do you like to work with, and where can they be found (types of store (hardware, fabric, sailing supplies, etc) rather than specific locations (Home Hardware, Fabricland, the Binnacle), please, since this is international)? Also, why do you like them? (If you like the rope to feel rough and scratchy against your skin, or if it's nice and soft and comfortable, or...)