Prelude
How much rope do you own? Have you ever stopped to think about it? Laid it out and added up all your coils by diameter? Ok I haven’t either but I have a rough idea of what’s in each of my rope kits and it was time to refresh or add to some of them. If you’re like me until now like most things in life your bondage rope buying no matter how near and dear to your heart has been a fairly sanitized consumer transaction. You show up at the event, party, or mixer and hit the vendor area or go online.
Truthfully i thought about trying to process my own rope at first a few years back to save a few bucks. That wasn’t enough motivation though for me to not take the easy road and buy my rope dyed finished. Unpack the box and find a willing stunt bunny or the chesty blonde and it was off to the races. Still the idea of making my own rope kept creeping into my twisted little mind. Two things made me take a leap of faith, first I had made a few impact toys earlier this year for a friend’s birthday (and then a few more for a jealous friend and my own personal collection). I started out on a whim but enjoyed the process and connection I had with them when they were finished. Secondly it was a passing comment during one of the breakouts at the GRUE I attended this past fall about gifting that stuck in my head. I’ll cover that in the next post.
Now on to the Buffoonery of me making rope
I looked at and lusted over the Do It Yourself Kits from Maui Kink for about three months and some where back in the summer when they started sponsoring Ropecast I started looking at their bulk spools of hemp. let’s face it I’m for lack of a better term very into temptation and just like a lithe flirtatious play friend every time I’d see an ad on Fet or listen to Graydancer I’d think I really should try this. I pinged my friends over at Fit2bTied since I knew J used their hemp a fair amount. I was just looking for insight about their rope and dealing with them. In the past I’ve ordered stuff on line and been disappointed by lead time, service, or in a few cases with vanilla sex toys quality. He had great things to say about their service. Done I was sold.
Then twice I filled out the Maui order form and never hit submit. Maybe it was because I’m just to toppy to be comfortable using the term submit even when it comes to my order or maybe i was afraid things would go sideways.
It was Thanksgiving night while I sat in a big quiet house watching French movies on Netflix that I finally filled out the order form and hit send. One DIY Kit #2 and a spool of 6mm after all if I’m going to fuck up why not do it in a kind of big way. I looked at it this way if I managed to 5 good useable 30 foot pieces out of the kit and spool combined I was more or less at a breakeven point if I had bought them as finished coils. Anything extra was a bonus financially speaking and there is no way I could be worse at making rope than I am at speaking and translating French.
The box arrived a little over a week later when I was in New York. I literally got a text from the Chesty Blonde that read ” A Stinky box arrived for you” I laughed and asked in my reply that she put it in my office and just leave it alone. Did the box stink? Raw hemp has a distinct smell and beauty well its in the eye of the beholder. Two days later I’d finally be home and the following morning I just couldn’t wait. I was working from home and after getting the kids off to school unpacked the new stuff. Cut the Spool into mostly 30 and 15 foot lengths with a handful of 4 footers as well just to have more short ropes incase i need to be a little extra sadistic.
The DIY kit from Maui Kink came with a CD filled with great and easy to follow instructions for every step of the process. For the most part I followed them to the letter with a few exceptions.
The first exception to following directions is you need a BIGGER POT! Trust me I thought I had a huge pot (20 quarts) and by conventional home kitchen standards it might be. After all everyone thinks theirs is fucking huge right? Mine is big enough for a 10 ears of corn or enough chili to feed a big football party on a cold fall day however it was nowhere near big enough to cook all the rope from the DIY kit at one time. It’s now 7:45 am and I want to get my rope making freak on it was like Christmas for kinsters and damn it I was going to play with my new toys as soon as possible. Executive decision time from the DIY having prepped and laundering the rope as instructed but when it came time to boil I was going to do the 8mm first (it has two 30ft and two 15 footers just for reference). After 3 hours the same amount of the 6mm went in fresh boiling water. As the 8 mm was drying.
Earlier I had alluded to the smell of raw hemp, which wasn’t too bad as it cooked the stove top fan and a cracked window kept things more than bearable. A lit candle after all was done cleared out the remnants with in about 30 minutes. Lilly did ask who had been riding horses without her when she got home from school.
Two unexpected things came of the process that day. The smell and feel of the wet rope reminded me of my grandfather. Weird and unexpected I’ll grant you but he owned a farm and some race horses. Even before Diva asked if we had a cool new barn scented candle I was having childhood memories that were long forgotten of holding wet leader lines for horses on a gallop during a cool dewy morning and of tying rope to the rafters and swinging through the barn from hay bale to hay bale. I’ve been playing with rope for years in an adult bondage sort of way but never realized that in one way or another I had always been playing with rope for as long as I can remember, exercising horses, at scouts, or plunging over a steep hillside with it tied to a tree while playing war. For whatever reason I forgot I even had my own coils of rope in the shop and barn as kid that no one else was allowed to touch. In retrospect the leap to bondage really wasn’t much of a jump. The second thing I learned is that washing, boiling and drying was the easy part of the process.
I had my zen on I was loving the work and it was a great diversion. Rope for me has always been about not only escape, dominance, and sex but focus. In yoga terms it is about me being mindful and present and rope processing was falling into line with that. It is rare that I can actually clear my mind and focus on only one thing. I can fuck you hard and fast and not necessarily be present mentally with scene’s and rope I’m always there. My inner peace was about to end as I sat in front of the TV whipping rope ends and laughing at “big bang theory” when my lovely chesty blonde asked EXACTLY when I planned on finished the entire process. Apparently December 19th wasn’t soon enough since she informed me “you can’t have rope out when my dad’s here”. She was right that I had no intention of explaining to him what I was up to. He wouldn’t get it and would freak out beyond measure…as we all know there are some people you just can’t come out to. Wait a damn second no one told me I was running hotel Malflic again…Mother Fucker!
This news caused me to change course a little. Originally I planned to air dry all the rope but the following afternoon; Friday after work I began my rope making death march and enlisted the help of the dryer. The instructions state empty the lint trap after every cycle…they are not kidding what you see in the picture was after 20 minutes of drying.
I ended up emptying it twice per cycle. My Friday night was spent boiling and drying rope with a short interlude that included little Italian number who wanted me for my uber sexy geekiness. Ok I went shopping for a computer with her but I like to think it’s because she finds my geek skills alluring that why she’s always coming by, so let me dream.
Speaking of dreaming Saturday I woke up early, tossed another batch in the dryer and began stretching the already dried rope. Next
time you see your favorite rope maker… tip them, send them a bottle of their favorite demon or give them a big hug and a very dirty kiss. I’m not sure if I was doing it right, maybe I was over zealous, maybe I was doing the big dumb guy thing and working too hard because I like things that are physical but by the time I had stretched half of the rope my shoulders were throbbing, I was covered in hemp fuzz and sweat but none of this begins to explain how badly my hands were trashed, cramped and tired. My tip for this portion would be to start off wearing thick leather gloves.
Six hours later I’d take on stretching the second half of the batch as I began to dye the morning’s rope. Again I broke away from the instructions due to time and lack of fuzz I opted not to burnish it and because of the pot size dying would be in two batches. I was literally so anal about it that I not only measured every drop of water but every second of the stirring, mixing and soaking process. The colors came out identical overall I got lucky.
After a night hanging in loose coils I tossed them into the dyer and then came the only part of the process that I’m not certain I did correctly. Oiling the rope was not my forte. The color turned out so well that originally I was going to finish everything beyond the DIY kit without dying it leaving it a natural.
I got the”OOOH what a pretty color” from the Blonde so I decided to put on the brakes. I had enough colored length to give as the gifts to friends for the holidays. If she likes the color that means she might like to be tied up with it a little more often my dumb male mind thought so instead I’d wait to finish the rest, order more dye, take the time to burnish what remained since it was fuzzy. Plus this would allow me to play with the new color after our holiday guests went home. After all it’s not like I don’t have rope to use on her it’s just not rope I processed…with any luck it will be what I get to do for the first time on New Years Eve. I can’t think of a better way to start off the new year!
Postlude
If you’ve ever thought about processing your own rope I’d say go for it. It’s cheaper than therapy and isn’t hard if you just follow the directions and take your time. The folks over at Maui Kink make it very easy to try with their DIY kits and once you’ve done that buying in bulk and whipping your own ends isn’t a big jump. So far all of it has turned out to be not only usable but good enough that I’m proud to share it with like minded souls in my life
Here’s what I’ll do differently next time
1) A much bigger pot (fuck I hate farm sales but might need to hit a few to find one cheap)
2) Uncoil then entire spool and when prepping it check for abnormalities marking them with a string before
determining what lengths to cut from where. I measured and then prepped and inspected the rope after cutting. A few spots needed to be cut out and led to shorter lengths. It could have been avoided if I’d have taken my time before cutting. So I have a few more 15 ft pieces than expected. Despite that I really did end up using all but a few inches of the rope I bought
3) Don’t try to stretch the rope all in one day unless you are looking to have sore hands and a killer arm and shoulder work out. My hands still hurt on Monday and into Tuesday of this week
4) Buy more Dye just in case. Having just one color is like fucking only in the missionary position, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s how most of us start but before too long you want to experiment with all the postions from the Joy of Sex or all the colors in the rainbow.









