Bondage You DISLIKE!

[Stahlketten]

Are there any particular forms of bondage or equipment you do NOT like used on you?
I was thinking back on a post I saw from a woman who did not mind being tied up but really hated it when her toes were tied up. That was completely "unnecessary" as she put it.

[simoxp43]

I hate suspension bondage. My wife has always been fascinated by this practice and we tried it in a dungeon with a professional mistress but unfortunately it is not for me.

[dsteve]

I hate zip ties. The hurt and for me they do not have the slightest erotic effece. I generally like the soft stuff like rope, cloth strips, scarves, leather straps.
I also hate duct tape. Or any tape at all for that matter. I think it just looks ugly and shows a lack of care and attention. I don't want fast and easy, I want care and planning.

[ruru67]

I kinda got over a lot of rope bondage, especially "Japanese" bondage, "Shibari", call it what you want.. Takes too long, and I eventually decided I just couldn't abide the amount of mysticism around it. I mean, really, you see one TK tie, you've basically seen them all - and it's a terrible tie in just about every respect. I've never been tied in one that I couldn't get out of in a very short space of time, and the number of radial nerve injuries that tie has caused just beggars belief.

Oh, and some of the practices I'd seen taught by so-called "experts", like using carabiners as pulleys to lift the full weight of your subject, using jute rope ... there are so many mechanical and safety issues in doing that, and yes, I have exactly that seen that abuse snap rope and drop someone. Fortunately it broke on the first pull, and the subject didn't fall far.

Yeah, nah. Fine with using rope as tethers. But spending hours doing crappy, dangerous ties that don't actually work? Pass. Gimme some leather and steel.

[boundBinder]

I have an aversion to metal handcuffs, owing to a misadventure during self-bondage as a teenager.

[Jimdini]

As I have aged I have gone off rope bondage, While I like the almost total immobility that can be achieved by a strict tie, I find that my old circulation now means I need out far to quickly to be able to enter the subspace sensation i use to enjoy.

[ruru67]

I have an aversion to metal handcuffs, owing to a misadventure during self-bondage as a teenager.

I have very mixed feelings about handcuffs. The trouble is that they're less about restraint than they are about control, so when one's kinks are more about the former, the shortcomings of (most) handcuffs - locks that can be opened with a sewing needle, narrow bracelets that invite nerve and tendon damage if struggled too hard against (and chain placement on them that increases leverage. But I do like the idea that they're quick to apply and generally pretty solid.

[boundBinder]

I admit they are good for "inescapable bondage" when you're doing things on your own, but your comment about restraint vs. control also rings true with me--they just offered too much freedom of movement for what I want. They still worked for what I was doing at the time, which was to not be able to get out of the ropes I applied until I got to the key.

The trouble is, what I had was a cheap set of metal toy ones. I rolled over onto them(they were behind my back) in my struggles, and the mechanism that was supposed to prevent them from over-tightening failed on both cuffs. They ratcheted tighter, and within seconds my hands were going numb. The pain was intense. Bound as I was, it took me a while to reach the key, and even then there was so much pressure on the locks that the fragile, pot-metal key wouldn't turn and I almost broke it. I had to maneuver myself to actually lay on top of the cuff--tightening it further--to relieve enough pressure to unlock one of them. It took several tries, and by the time I got one wrist free so I could free the other, I had horrible, purple marks around both wrists. My hands and fingers had numbness and tingling in them for weeks, and I had to wear long sleeves in the Texas summer for most of that time to hide the marks. I am lucky that I had no permanent damage.

[JaniceNoyb]

Duct tape. Yukkkk.....just yukkk. I don't use it for anything because it leaves a nasty, sticky residue.

[Stahlketten]

Some of these seem like pretty reasonable complaints and dislikes. Others seem more like poor quality equipment and technique.
Cheap and poorly made handcuffs are not particularly good, but the well manufactured ones can be a part of a pretty reliable restraint system that is darn near impossible for the prisoner to escape from. If you doubt this, look at the prisoner transport techniques for long haul and for court appearances. Without help, the prisoner will not get free.... Mostly. There are some people who have figured out how to open handcuffs even under a Black Box, but those people are pretty rare.

As for rope bondage, the quality of rope and technique are all important. If the person doing the tieing knows his / her business, the prisoner is not getting free unless he can cut the rope with his fingernails. It is pretty hard to undo a knot if you can't get fingers on the knot.
As for the strength of ropes and carabiners, someone that Ruru was watching clearly didn't pick the right equipment. Ropes and carabiners are used for mountain climbing and hold even when a body drops from a height. Climbing carabiners are strong. Dollar store carabiners are not.
I remember an article about suspension bondage. The author was an engineer and pointed out that to suspend a dynamic load which a person is, one needs equipment with a load rating about eight to ten times what the static weight is. The example was that to lift a typical person safely, you need equipment capable of lifting a small compact car. Even a pair of handcuffs only needs to hold a load of about 550 pounds to pass the US NIJ test standards and that is way too low for a suspension.

It is unfair to fault a technique when you are using inappropriate equipment.

[ruru67]

As for the strength of ropes and carabiners, someone that Ruru was watching clearly didn't pick the right equipment. Ropes and carabiners are used for mountain climbing and hold even when a body drops from a height. Climbing carabiners are strong. Dollar store carabiners are not.

"Don't use as pulleys things that are not pulleys" is pretty much one of my standard rants on ropework. The carabiners in use were proper climbing ones, but jute rope is not and can not be rated for safety critical applications, and pulling it over a short radius surface (e.g. a carabiner or steel ring) under load does an absolutely astonishing amount of damage to the stuff. You just can't do that kind of lift safely - and yet it was being taught in a class.

The trouble with small radius "pulleys" with a large radius rope - let's say a 6mm rope over a 12mm diameter (6mm radius) "pulley", is that the outside circumference of the rope turn is twice that of the inner circumference, meaning the inside of the turn is only taking compressive force; all the tension is being applied to the fibres on the outside of the turn. Then of course the "pulley" is not turning, so there's extra friction on that slack. compressed rope. As the rope slides up, the inside edge is being bunched up ahead of the metal, and after it comes off the turn i's being suddenly tensioned again.

Just thinking about where the force in that system is all going and what it's doing to the structure of the rope makes my head hurt.

The tie being taught in that class hand the subject tied on the floor in a TK, with one leg straight across the floor in line with the body, the other straight up to the lower carabiner, with lines from a hip-harness, the TK and the lower leg. Then the upper and lower carabiners were tied in a "pulley system", and the subject was then lifted off the floor by dropping one's whole weight on the rope from the top carabiner.

I took one look at the proposed rig, and decided to break out my heaviest rope.

That rig had no redundancy in it, and with the subject tied that way, there was no way for them to break their fall - the only saving grace was that we were tying on thin mattresses, provided by the venue, not the teacher, and more for comfort than safety.

I was about to do the lift, when bang! - the person next to me has their rope break as he did the first lift. I immediately released my rig in case I needed to help, but fortunately she had barely lifted of the mattress before suddenly coming back down, and was fine. I shudder to think what would have happened if the break was on the second or third pull and she was some way up ...

I remember an article about suspension bondage. The author was an engineer and pointed out that to suspend a dynamic load which a person is, one needs equipment with a load rating about eight to ten times what the static weight is.

Yep. The math is actually scary. If you drop a tethered object from any height, if the tether is perfectly inelastic, the force on the each end of the tether when it goes taut is infinite. Real world materials are, of course, not perfectly inelastic and respond to the impact through some combination of stretching, deforming, or breaking. That's why dynamic loads are so different to static loads and can't be treated the same way ... the math requires an understanding of the way the material responds to stress - if it stretches a lot, like many synthetic fibre ropes, the deceleration is reduced (that is, spread over more time). If not, then the deceleration (and force applied to the ends) is higher, as is the risk of the material being damaged or failing.

Natural fibre rope is made from surprisingly short fibres (a few cm for jute), held together by friction in the twists of the yarns. They don't have a lot of stretch - only that obtained by tightening the twists (compressing the fibres), and otherwise react to over-stressing by having fibres break or slide past each other - you'll often see loops or broken ends of fibres sticking out of the rope as it wears.

[Stahlketten]

Sounds like you just stated what I did: the problem was a bad choice in materials rather than an unworkable technique. When I was young, my father was tying off fairly large tree branches before sawing them so that they would not come down in an uncontrolled fashion. He knew exactly what he was doing with a great economy of knots so that a not terribly heavy kid could control the lowering of a rather large branch. I don't claim to have that kind of knowledge.
If you have great interest in the subject, you should look at the British specifications for materials and procedures for a measured drop judicial hanging. After WW2, Americans were tasked with executing a few Nazis by hanging. The process did not go all that smoothly and some of the hangings amounted to short drop hangings. The British on the other hand never had a problem with their executions and measured drop hangings. I am fairly certain they used only natural fiber rope, but the specifications and handling were quite stringent. The forces involved were certainly higher than what we are discussing here.

As for using a sewing needle as a lock pick, if you have the tools to effectively bend the sewing needle, you have the tools needed to defeat handcuffs even without the sewing needle. Typical handcuffs, even the "High-Security" versions, are not intended to be resistant to attack by tools. The typical handcuff chain is very light and can be broken with minimal tools. Paper clips don't work all that well for lock picks either but bobby pins actually do work reasonably well because their shape and quality of metal tend to be about right.

[ruru67]

Sounds like you just stated what I did: the problem was a bad choice in materials rather than an unworkable technique.

Well, yes, but the point is more that the use of jute rope in particular (and ~ 6mm diameter jute specifically) is part of the "mythos" of "Japanese" rope bondage, even when doing no-redundancy, high-load dynamic suspensions. As I noted my patience with the attitude that "tradition" trumps all else (including, it seems, basic safety) eventually ran out.

I can fulfil my needs without risking splatting my partners or myself into the floor or causing debilitaing nerve compression injuries.

If you have great interest in the subject, you should look at the British specifications for materials and procedures for a measured drop judicial hanging. After WW2, Americans were tasked with executing a few Nazis by hanging. The process did not go all that smoothly and some of the hangings amounted to short drop hangings. The British on the other hand never had a problem with their executions and measured drop hangings. I am fairly certain they used only natural fiber rope, but the specifications and handling were quite stringent. The forces involved were certainly higher than what we are discussing here.

It got worse than that. The Americans executed the 11 Nuremberg defendants using the short drop, which as you note didn't guarantee a quick death. But elsewhere, executions were done any which way, and that included standing the convicts on the backs of trucks under the nooses, and driving out from under them - they'd swing but not drop, and pretty much always died from airway constriction.

Have a look for the film Pierrepoint (2005) - it's about Albert Pierrepoint, who was the lead executioner for the British war crimes executions. (As with most dramatisations, some liberties are taken with facts...)

The Russians, of course, would just shoot them.

Of course a hangman's rope only needs to go once around the neck, and British hangman's nooses have a spliced loop to form the noose, not a big bulky knot as in American practice, and can just use a fairly thick rope and not worry about its strength. (They'd also tension the rope overnight prior to use to reduce its ability to stretch and cushion the impact.)

(This discussion took a dark turn!)

As for using a sewing needle as a lock pick, if you have the tools to effectively bend the sewing needle, you have the tools needed to defeat handcuffs even without the sewing needle. Typical handcuffs, even the "High-Security" versions, are not intended to be resistant to attack by tools. The typical handcuff chain is very light and can be broken with minimal tools. Paper clips don't work all that well for lock picks either but bobby pins actually do work reasonably well because their shape and quality of metal tend to be about right.

I've not needed to bend a sewing needle to pick a handcuff. Sewing needles, paperclips, large staples, they all work - some need bending, but that can be done using the keyhole. The bits on the keys are small, so you don't need to reach very far in to tweak the double lock back and then lift the pawl.

[Stahlketten]

Yes, I have watched the movie about Pierrepoint. Tish and Tosh.....
The details of British measured drop hangings made the news a few years back when there were some executions in Singapore. The executioner was a rather large Indian fellow named Singh.

The back of the truck hangings don't really count. The Nuremburg prisoners allocated to the Americans didn't necessary fare all that well. Yes, they ended up dead, but not without a lot of pain.

As for picking handcuffs, a sewing needle might work for the poorly made ones with bad precision. It would not work so well with the more precise ones. A method that works to bend your pick is to use the groove in the side of the single arm. The clearance there is generally just about perfect. From what I remember, American Handcuff Company stuff is generally easy to pick. Hiatts are not so easy.

[ruru67]

As for picking handcuffs, a sewing needle might work for the poorly made ones with bad precision. It would not work so well with the more precise ones. A method that works to bend your pick is to use the groove in the side of the single arm. The clearance there is generally just about perfect. From what I remember, American Handcuff Company stuff is generally easy to pick. Hiatts are not so easy.

I won't pretend my cuffs are anything special - I've been pretty clear about my attitude to them, and the ones I have occupy the intersection of "interesting" and "cheap".

But the basic fact about handcuffs - outside of expensive, specialised products - is that factors like reliability, manufacturing cost, portability, and ease of use are much higher priorities than pick prevention. .

[Stahlketten]

But the basic fact about handcuffs - outside of expensive, specialised products - is that factors like reliability, manufacturing cost, portability, and ease of use are much higher priorities than pick prevention. .

Maybe and maybe not. The old Tower handcuffs used fairly complicated internal lock mechanisms to make picking difficult. It even makes duplicating keys fairly difficult when the cuffs are there in front of you to try after filing on a key blank.
The original Peerless 1912 swing through handcuffs were actually not stamped steel as far as I can tell. They were fairly good quality machined steel even though the lock case is laminated and riveted. I pointed that manufacturing quality out to my Jailer to show her how something that old can still work without any problems.

As far as modern handcuffs, they are as with most things manufactured. Some companies design and manufacture excellent quality items while others do not. I personally own at least 40-50 different kinds from different manufacturers and time periods from around the world and would not make a blanket statement as you have just done.
My thread about S&W manufacturing was written after examining or working on well over 40 pairs of cuffs from a single manufacturer and noticing a recurring pattern. There are other issues I have seen but with only three or four pairs of cuffs having a similar problem, the sample size is too small to come to any reliable conclusion.

[ruru67]

The old Tower handcuffs used fairly complicated internal lock mechanisms to make picking difficult. It even makes duplicating keys fairly difficult when the cuffs are there in front of you to try after filing on a key blank.

I would definitely consider Tower cuffs in the "expensive, specialised" category, on the grounds that they're not something your average beat cop would have on their belt, and they're not something I can just get for a reasonable (to me) price, at least not without a lot of luck. (I'd definitely go for a pair if I saw them at a good enough price.)

I'll point you at the US National Institute of Justice standard for handcuffs: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/253876.pdf, which covers both single-use and reusable plastic cuffs (types 1 & 2, basically "riot cuffs") and regular metal handcuffs, with or without a standard (specified) key (types 3 & 4). I'd note that (a) this is clear that all such restrains are intended to be used when the subject is "continuously supervised", and (b) while tamper resistance is mentioned, it is only to say that type 4 should be better than type 3, which in turn should be better than plastic... but while the spec is detailed on testing for strength, and checking build quality, there's nothing on pick or tamper resistance.

Which I think supports my basic view that modern cuffs just don't have save, secure, tamper-resistant, unsupervised restraint in mind, or at least, not as a priority. That doesn't mean better cuffs aren't or can't be made, but your basic cheap modern handcuff doesn't do that job and was never intended to.

[Stahlketten]

I do not believe you are correct regarding Tower handcuffs. They and ones very much like them such as Mattatucks were about the only game in town for a very long time. Relatively speaking, they were not that expensive for the time if you look at contemporary catalogs. No they were not cheap, but even today, the list price for a set of duty handcuffs is not cheap.
If they were so uncommon, there would not be so many sets floating around in places like eBay 130 years later.
They turn up in the oddest places because they were so easy to get at the time. I have gotten working sets with key for about $10 or so and never pay more than $50 for a set.
Just for amusement's sake, I remember buying several sets of S&W Model 94 handcuffs brand new from a police supply store for about $25 each. These days, the typical price on eBay is often about 10 times that.

As for NIJ standards, consider that they are a MINIMUM standard and what people really produce varies all over the place. Even with the highest security handcuffs, a restrained prisoner is supposed to be kept under close supervision, so that isn't really saying much.

Your views might have a bit more credibility if you actually had a sample size higher than zero to work with.
That part is not hard to fix. Modern handcuffs are usually pretty durable and used sets are not expensive.
I have gotten several brand new sets of S&W and Peerless handcuffs for $20 including shipping. Those are not common, but not impossible to find.

[ruru67]

I do not believe you are correct regarding Tower handcuffs.

I think you misunderstand. I'm talking about the kinds of cuffs I can get cheaply as toys. I'm not a collector; if you've ben paying any attention at all, my attitude to handcuffs generally should be pretty clear. Nevertheless, I'd really like a pair of Tower cuffs if I could get a pair for a reasonable price, even a replica if that was available. But I'm not trawling eBay for them every day, and I'm not paying the prices I see in a casual search.

Your views might have a bit more credibility ...

I don't think that was called for.

[Stahlketten]

You are right. I was not being very kind. The problem is that I see you as attempting to sound authoritative when you simply don't have the experience to justify those claims. I buy quite a few different kinds of handcuffs because I want the opportunity to examine them closely. To me, the knowledge is worth the money and the idea that it sort of satisfies a kink doesn't hurt either.

As for antique handcuffs, the best deals are often not on eBay. They are usually in person at antique shops or gun and militaria shows and swap meets. EBay can be a good source but only after you have gotten knowledgeable enough to know what to look for in photographs. Even then I screw up from time to time but I also get some amazing unexpected deals from time to time.
Tower handcuffs were made from about the 1870s through WW2. There are LOTs of them out there in varying condition (mostly mediocre). Always be prepared to walk away when the vendor is asking more than you think the item is worth.

As for effective rope bondage, look at the way the Chinese tie their prisoners before execution. Unless you can cut a rope you can't reach or untie a knot you can't reach, you are not getting out without help. It isn't pretty but it is quite effective.