Another, easier and cheaper solution is not to use locks at all and substitute spring-loaded snap hooks, U-shaped, threaded shackles and other non-locking devices to secure chains to cuffs and cuffs to collars. For safety, this is a better idea than using locks, but it is important to recognize that even a non-locking gadget can become uncooperative if it gets snagged in a chain link or otherwise non-functional. I always test these set-ups before relying on them to easily release and I recommend this for any chain/cuff users. One thing I can strongly recommend against is the use of a chain dog collar, the kind with a welded ring at each end, as wrist bindings. It seems so well suited for such a function that I made the mistake of using it a great deal some years ago until I got trapped in one and had to cut the chain with bolt cutters to escape. The problem is that the end loops can get twisted or snagged and then the rings may not slide back far enough for you to get your hands out. I know this sounds unlikely, but I personally do not recommend using this type of bondage cuffs.
I like the feeling of handcuffs and the larger variations. I use three different sizes:
1. conventional hand cuffs which, for me, only fit my wrists;
2. leg cuffs or shackles, with a larger opening that fits ankles without boots and my arms just above the elbows; and
3. finally a set of very large cuffs from Chicago Handcuff Company, which were modified and sold as "collars" but barely fit my neck.
For now, I'll refer to these as the A, B and C cuffs, C being the largest. I have multiple sets of each and there are two totally different types of keys needed for this group. The cheaper type A hand cuffs take a larger key. These cuffs are often sold for under $10 a pair and work fine, but require a bit more care and attention because they are very cheaply made and have a sort of swing arm locking switch, which may lock up when you don't want it to, or spin freely to the point where the cuff becomes unusable. If you have or use these economy cuffs, I strongly recommend your using a fix for this problem. Use a small amount of a two-part epoxy fix-it glue to coat and cover the locking lever in the unlocked position. Let it set a few days and this will keep your cuffs unlocked and safer. By the way, these cheaper cuffs are usually much easier to pick. For your information, there are two traditional ways to pick handcuffs: using a hairpin or similar metal probes in the keyhole to push the locking lever and using a makeshift shim to push aside the pin that holds the swing arm of the cuff in the ratchet. Usually the ratchet has a strong spring on it, but it can be moved back and this allows the notched arm of the cuff to slide free. Double locking cuffs are harder to pick, but can be done the same way if you know what to do.
Some important accessories that I have added over many years, buying a few every now and then, include dozens of double-ended snap hooks in several sizes and various spring loaded hooks and connecting devices to connect cuffs and chains. I use three types of snap connectors: large and small double-ended ones that have a snap hook at each end, and large and small ones with a fixed ring at one end and a snap hook at the other. All of these have their uses and your own creative applications will help you find how to best use them. Hardware stores offer a tremendous selection of this sort of thing, but you need to inspect them before you buy to make sure they are not cheap junk with springs that will break or snaps that will bend or freeze up. I buy most of this equipment from marine supply stores and find that although they are more expensive, they tend to offer a form of brass or stainless steel rather than carbon steel and this will prevent rust from salty sweat. The range of connecting fittings is huge and you will find many really interesting items that may suit your chain/cuff combinations. If you can spend the time, browsing a catalog or internet site from such places will reveal many fun connectors at reasonable prices.
One device that is an excellent accessory and has a built-in safety element is a quick-release fitting used to release a chain or rope when there is strong, continuous tension on the line. I first saw these used to fasten horses in cross ties in a barn while they were being groomed or worked on by a vet or blacksmith. The purpose of the quick release was evident when the horse became agitated and was pulling hard on the connecting chains or ropes. Unfastening the conventional snap locks could be impossible and, until the fitting in the walls pulled out or broke, there was no way to free the panicked animal. The quick release fitting allows you to just pull down on the spring-loaded release and the closed ring opens. You can find these wonderful hardware items in feed stores and equestrian supply houses. They are not cheap, but can be useful and may even save your butt if you get too entangled in your own chains. Remember though that there are weight limits to all of these accessories, so check and test before putting your body weight on any item, no mater how strong it seems.
In addition to the cuff sets, and in the interests of economy, I have added quite a bit of hardware, including flexible aluminum bands to clamp legs, elbows and ankles. These clamps are nothing more than bent bands formed to enclose legs and arms at certain points. Once you measure the wrap-around length for, say your legs above the knee, you cut the bands with a hacksaw or rotary cutting tool and bend, use vice grips and pliers to bend small U-shaped "hooks" in each end. One end should fit into the other. Allowing them to interlock, essentially making two 180 degree C-shaped fittings that, when pressed together, interlock and hold the clamp in place. To visualize how this works, take your hands and curl back the fingers and then place the fingers of the left hand into the slot made by the right hand. As you can tell, this makes a very efficient lock as long as you keep tension on both hands. The same system is used on the couplers between railway cars. The beauty of this design is that you can stay clamped in this arrangement as long as you want, but can instantly get free by simply compressing the band a bit until the interlocking C fittings unlock. If you work the design carefully, polishing it up with a file or rotary drill with a grinding wheel, you can even make them so that they release easier by just sliding apart or less easy to unlock by bending the ends so that the C fittings sort of snap together and need more force to release them. For additional functionality, you can use small chains to connect these bands or to cinch them. If you want total security, a combination of these bands and connection bands or chain make a very nice, multi-band enclosure that you can use from toes to head, creating a kind of body cage.
Making these bands up is easy and you can buy all kinds of flat aluminum stock in many hardware or home maintenance stores. Working with this metal takes some level of skill and you will do best if you have a strong vice mounted on a work surface, some locking pliers, channel locks and a few other tools to help you cut and bend the metal. You can make metal bands that work very well to clamp your extremities and body parts and you don't have to lock them. If you do want to use locks, drill multiple holes at half-inch intervals on both ends of the clamps and put the locks through these holes. This may sound more complicated than it is and over the years, I have played with this sort of restraint and even made a crude, but functional chastity belt with this material, a few locking bolts and small locks.
But, back to cuffs. One complaint from some users is that cuffs tend to cut into the skin if they are too tight or too much pressure is placed on them from the chains. One way to fix this is to line the cuffs with thick leather bands that you also can make. I have never seen these for sale, but the concept is not too complicated to make your own, using the U-shaped portions of padlock hasps to slip the cuff bands through. I have also used contact cement to hold leather linings on cuffs and this works well enough, but does not last long.
Here's a typical self-bound session: My first consideration is how long do I want to stay in this bondage. This is an important factor. It will determine what I use and how fast I want it to come to an orgasm.
Dressed appropriately, I first put a chain around my waist. For safety and speed, this belt chain is connected with a pair of double-ended snap clips. If I am confident that I have time and the ability to get free later on, I may use a lock here inste
ad, but the clips serve the purpose well and are what I use most of the time. I lock a pair of closely connected B shackles on my ankles. I use a set of C cuffs on my legs above the calf and just below the knee. As an alternative, I use a one-inch aluminum clamp band around my legs above and below the knee. These are far more inhibiting than the cuffs and don't cut into the flesh as much as the cuffs do.
If I want to bind the upper thigh, I'll use a double length of chain and, before locking it, pull the long end through the space between the legs and back again, tightly cinching the chain around the upper thigh. I find this very stimulating, but it needs to be very tight so it doesn't slip down later. If you do this, allow some slack so that when you bend your legs the muscles will take up the slack when they expand. If you don't intend to bend your knees, make the binding tight to start with.
There is an alternate to this: Cut two lengths of chain the same size and measure them to fit around the upper thigh, just where the leg meets the crotch. We women have a better nook there than men do and a chain around that highest portion of the thigh will stay in place if the tightness is carefully adjusted. I use short chains with snap hooks on the ends to suspend these thigh chains from the chain belt that I already have put on, the suspending chains running down the outside of my hips. This works well to hold the thigh chains in place without them having to be frightfully tight. As always, if you get creative, you can run additional chains all the way down the outside of your legs, locking or clipping them to each band or cuff set as you go towards the feet.
If this gets too complicated for you, you can always go to rope, which can be equally rewarding and weighs a lot less.
As to narrow escapes, I guess there have been a few. I once cuffed a new boyfriend to a piling on a beach only to find out that I had lost my keys in the sand. As the tide came in, we both panicked and I enlisted the help of a cop to set him free. He was amused but said nothing other than suggesting that we carry a spare key. My boyfriend was less amicable.
Chapter Twelve
The privacy and confidentiality aspects of SB pose some interesting points for consideration here.
The double standard is very plain:
There are many people who know a great deal about SB and probably practice it themselves, but are still unlikely to admit it.
Carol - The double standard
If you have BDSM inclinations like I have had since I was a kid, you soon discover that there is a double standard about the whole subject. Even though you know there are millions of people like you out there, you may have a very hard time finding someone else to play with.
The double standard is just like the one for sex…everyone pretends they aren't into it and everyone knows that everyone is. For the B&D practitioner, the combination of double standard ("oh, not me") mindset and the lack of out-of-the-closet players carried me directly to my own door and I began to get seriously involved with tying and restraining myself. Even as I write this response to the survey, even knowing that my name and any identification will be kept secret, it is still tough to open up and talk about what I do and how I do it. Although I know some people, men, women and transsexuals who all admit to enjoying and being into self-restraint, they all recognize the double standard mentioned above and are most discrete about whom they discuss it with. I don't blame them. I still haven't figured out how to bring up the subject with anyone.
But my self education on SB has been a long and interesting one. I found out early that men, especially gay men and those into cross-dressing were, it seems, much more inclined to talk and write about it. I learned from magazines and what were probably ghost-written letters to editors of bondage magazines the details of SB in the lives of both men and women, most of whom maintained that they were straight.
So how is this done? How can anyone keep such a thing secret and for how long? Can people go through their whole life without ever revealing their SB practices and when they die, are they able to still hide their equipment and paraphernalia or don't they care?
My B&D gear is stored in a large trunk in my basement. When I lived in an apartment, it was stored in suitcases. I once had a roommate who, I discovered later, tried to pick the locks on my luggage, for whatever reason I don't know, but she would have only found stuff that she already knew I used on her from time to time. So, no big deal there. Yeah, my first real bondage partner was my roommate. She was miles ahead of me and showed me many tricks. Like, for example, she had a nearly foolproof system for a timed release. I had heard and seen the ice cube and candle methods, but she had something that was much more reliable and not as hazardous as the candle thing. We took a five-gallon bucket and filled it with water, put another empty bucket under it and then put a very small hole in the side or bottom of the first bucket. Unless I wanted to turn over the bucket and get the whole room soaked, I had to wait until it drained before I could get the release keys. This worked well for us when we did our mutual SB thing. Until I met her, I had never thought about this kind of session. All it means is that two partners tie themselves and each other in such a way that they can do either their own thing while enjoying, watching or feeling the other or they are bound together in an erotically productive fashion. We did both. Our favorite was the 69 position with a double-ended dildo in each mouth. I don't have to explain how that worked, do I? The bondage simply added to the process, making us much hornier and more excited. One position was with our hands tied behind the other's back and our knees and ankles tied and wrapped around the other's head. We sometimes used bungee cord or rubber straps on our knees, so that there was a bit more flex available and the tension of the rubber tended to force the attached dildoe into the right place and the head back where it was supposed to be. Hooded and gagged with the back end of the fat rubber pricks, it was really wild to be driving the other end deep inside the partner and responding to her response. We went crazy doing this. It became a habit. It was addictive. We'd get home from work and get right to it. No dinner, no fun and games. No preface. Whoever got home first would set up the session and got to pick the devices. We had a drawer full of dildoes, some attached to a head harness and others that went on the waist/crotch belt. Whatever the first one picked out was the gear for the night. We actually slept with these things inside us, either in 69 or face to face with one big, fat dong going from her cunt to mine and thick straps around our waists and thighs. Getting set up for this sort of an evening was no big deal, but we usually showered first, then hopped into bed or onto the carpeted floor and went at it like crazed rabbits. The next day, we would both get odd looks from co-workers, (we worked in different places, thank God).
These experiences cultivated my own deeper needs. When I saw a Japanese video in which the woman was suspended from the ceiling with a vibrator up her pussy and another up her ass, a gag in her mouth and her head pulled back by a rope in her hair, I desperately wanted to be in that situation. But there was no one to help me do this, so I started working on a plan to do this myself, no matter how long or hard it might be. This is the basic story of how this desire came to fruition.
My first concern was how to get myself up in the air, four or five feet off the concrete basement floor and stay there. Hemp rope, like that in the video, was available from several vendors on the internet and I stocked up on it, spending several hundred dollars on nothing but the rope. This put a dent in my vacation savings, but I finally decided that if I did this right and it all came about, it would be a vacation I would never forget, so I spent the money. Selecting the heaviest and strongest beams in the basement ceiling, I drilled holes and fit heavy duty cross bolts and eyebolts at various locations, testing with dead weight and making sure that it would hold my mere 124 pounds, even bound in rope or chain.
I was having thoughts about the bondage medium, rope or chain, even though the bucks were already spent on the rope. But I thought that if it worked out, in the end, sooner or later, I could experiment with both and discover which worked better and why. So, while gatherin
g other necessary items, I started collecting chain, handcuffs and other related metal restraints. I was especially fond of wide steel collars that opened with a hinge in the back and locked tightly around my neck. One such collar I bought had four heavy D rings welded around the outside. This appealed to my sense of symmetry and I figured that a chain from each ring would definitely hold my head in place. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
With the sturdy supports overhead, I needed to find a way to do several things that, from past SB experience, I knew were pretty near impossible. First, I wanted to be completely bound for the suspension. That in itself is always a challenge. Do I tie myself so that I simply cannot ever get out, or do I build in a safety that will release me after a certain period of time or do I come up with some sort of magical escape mechanism that will release me when I want it to?
The first option made no sense, so I considered the other two. I omitted the possibility of having someone else come and free me, even though it had strong appeal to my sense of self-preservation. Back to this dilemma in a moment.
The second necessity, if I was going to emulate the suspension in the video, was finding a way to hoist myself up off the ground while totally bound. Both of these problems needed solving, and I turned to several sources on line, asking how one might remotely control a lift capable of holding my small weight, keep it raised and be able to release it when needed, all without touching the controls or the power winches involved. All sorts of suggestions came to me. It was clear that once tied, I could operate a remote control that would raise and lower the suspension ropes using one or more overhead electric winches. Well, that was no big discovery. I had already thought about that. My question really was how many winches did I want or need and how could I do this safely? Did I want a wired control or wireless? Did I need to come up with a back-up that would lock the winch's brake so that if the power failed, I would not be dropped to the floor below?
Secrets of the Women's Self-Bondage Cult Page 10