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TheHungryTiger -> RE: treating hemp rope (3/26/2008 4:38:36 AM)
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Howdy, as you can probably tell by looking at my sig file, I am with KinkyRopes.com and we are one of the places that fully-condition hemp rope. I cant give away spicific details about our process but I can give you some general guidelines.
STEP ONE) Boil the hell out of it. This above and beyond anything else is what is going to make the rope soft enough to use. Get the biggest pot you can find and toss the rope into a rolling boil for at least 2 hours. Be warned, this is going to stink up the place more than you will believe.
STEP TWO) Dry under tension. If you dry the rope just by tossing it into the clothes dryer, the indvidual strands will become long-jawed. Sorry if I cant describe what long-jawed is just in words. Even with pictures its kind of tricky. But lets jsut say that its required. The simplest way to do this is to coil it into real long loopps, hang it from a coat hanger, and add a weight to the bottom end.
STEP THREE) Break in the fibers. If you have a steady playpartner that dosent mind a bit of rough rope, simply use the rope to tie them up a dozen or so times. Or you can tie the whole length into a monkey chain, twist it up as tight as you can, and let it set for 48 hours. Then undo it all and monkeychain again from the oposite direction. Twist up tight and let sit for another 48 hours.
STEP FOUR) Defuzz. At this point there is going to be a bunch of little pokie strands sticking out at odd angles. The simplest way to get rid of them is to just burn them off. Run the rope quickly through a gas flame (NOT a candel flame or the soot will ruin your rope) . Then scrub it a bit with some steel wool to smooth out the burnt off pieces.
STEP FIVE) Oil it. There is going to be no end of argument about this step. Rope geeks love to nitpick about what is or is not the 'right' oil to use. Just be sure you use a VERY light amount. Something the size of a pencil ereaser will easily oil 100 feet of rope.
Naturaly there are all kinds of variations to these indvidual steps. And every place that sells treated hemp from KinkyRopes to TwistedMonk to BossBondage is going to have indvidual difrences that result in (sometimes very signifant) changes to the finished product. But this rough outline is fairly well the default standard.
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