Review Thurday: The Rope Flogger

A few months back, I found directions online for constructing rope floggers.  They were pretty simple, really; Buy a ring and a length of rope, cut the rope into 5-foot sections, double it over through the rings, knot the ends and wrap a twine handle round the top.

Cotton on top, Cotton-poly blend on the bottom.

I can do that, I thought.  It was off to Totem I went, to procure a couple of different types of rope.  I chose a thinner, tightly woven cotton and a thicker, "meatier" poly-cotton blend.  The rings were a bit more trouble to find.  I couldn't imagine where they'd be located, but they were in the section of little drawers that have all the different types of nuts and bolts.  They come in a multitude of sizes, and I think I went a little bit too generous on the sizes, but I wasn't sure exactly how tightly the rope would compress within the rings, this being my first time making them, so decided safe was better than sorry.

All in all, the supplies for both floggers cost me well under $20, including the twine I already had at home from previous projects.  Inexpensive, and they didn't take too much time to complete either.  The handles were created by tying overhand knots snugly around the outer perimeter of rope, the ends woven inside.  While I cut the smaller rope into four foot lengths, I cut the thicker into five feet lengths (thus the differences in the sizes of the floggers.

As to the actual use of the floggers, let me just say first that the knots have a lot of power.  Because of the intensity they create, these are absolutely not warm-up floggers.  Yowch.  Though the Masterly one seemed delighted in telling me how polka-dotted I became, the sensations were a little too intense at the beginning.  And when the knots wrap up over the top of a shoulder or around the side of a waist/hip region.... well holy crap.  It hurts like hell.

The intensity at the beginning made it pretty hard to relax, and I had to concentrate on my breathing and my muscle control (not easy when every inch of you is trying to reflexively react to what is physically going on) just to manage to stay in place.  It seemed as though I could feel each individual knot as it landed, which was really unnerving.  It took some time for the "leathering" of the skin to take place, at which point the sensations really shifted.

Instead of intense pain from the knots, it became an overall, thuddy and heavy sensation.  Ahhh, that was much better.  I could feel the tension and jumpiness dissipate as I relaxed into the sensations.  It actually became really, really nice after a while, and I started to revel in it, as I usually do with a flogging.

As for aftermath, there was quite a bit of soreness that evening, and some pretty little dotted bruises which bloomed to life in the morning.  I was pretty achey and stingy the next day too, which is one of the best things about a flogging in my opinion.  As time went on, I had started to crave harder and more serious blows, which I'm guessing would have left some pretty serious marks with those knots, so just a word to the wise on that one; this is not a non-marking play toy.

I think in the future, with a different flogger used for warm-up, this will become a fun and useful toy.  The heaviness of the knots, though, mean you need to already have some blood rushing to the skin surface and those lovely endorphins flowing before they land.  If you are interested in trying one out, it's worth the cheap investment and little bit of time it takes to create one.

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