The best sex toy I have never owned it was free. It was a simple bamboo cane that I found on the floor of a hardware store (they said I could have it). I put it to good use until I left it at a party one dreary morning. The regrettable loss left a hole in my heart and also made me wonder: can DIY sex toys work as well as the more expensive ones in sex shops?
I went on a mission to find out, recruiting the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to sex toys – Poppy Scarlett, who owns a London-based sex toy store Self and more – to help. She once asked her Instagram audience what BDSM toys they were using; “Probably 20 or 30 percent of people used DIY tools at home,” she recently told me in a South London Shibari studio.
My journey started in a large hardware store. I grabbed clothespins (£ 2.45), a long wooden dowel rod (£ 1.45), sandpaper (£ 3.45), ten bamboo canes (£ 3.75) and a metal spatula (£ 3). A friend I told about the article mentioned cable ties, but an experienced sadist told me it was dangerous – apparently it can cause nerve damage.
I asked a member of staff if I could buy a single bamboo stick, rather than the ten pack. “I can’t make this decision,” he replied with a smile. “You have to go ask customer service. He stopped, then as I walked away he said, “If they won’t let you do it, you have to whip them and tell them they’re mean.” Thank you sir.
The author’s booty in a hardware store. Photo: Simon Doherty
Sunday I went to a sex party and managed to line up three volunteer tramps and use the solid dowel rod – a cylindrical wooden stick typically used for carpentry – on them. But the scene quickly shifted to a swing, and the stick lay neglected on the ground for the next 20 minutes. The scene then turned into an impact game (the official term for where people hit each other for sexual gratification), but disaster struck: the stick snapped in half.
“It was a good tool to use,” said the woman responsible for the final blow. “But keep in mind that after an hour of continuous use it will definitely break, so for £ 1 that’s what you get.” Lesson 1: If there is no flex on an impact toy, it won’t work.
“When you buy a sex toy,” Scarlett told me, “you are paying for the materials, but you are also paying for the knowledge and skill to create that toy. People who create impact and sensation play tools have perfected their craft. They’ve already worked hard to figure out which materials won’t shatter or shatter and are safer to use.
Next Friday I was at the entrance to a members-only sex party in east London. A bouncer – a man the size of a little bear who seemed to have spent most of his adult life locked in a gym – was rummaging through my bag. He took out the metal spatula, glanced at it, then back at me, then again. Silence. Having trouble concealing his confusion, he let me pass.
Poppy Scarlet, Owner of Self & More: “One of the fun things about using household items is that it gives you the ability to look at something around the house and feel excited and playful.”
A tall blonde woman wanted to submit, so after negotiating safe limits and words (we went for the classic traffic light system: “orange” means continue the scene, but tone it down; “red” means stop immediately ), we played with the clothespins. “I prefer clamps to nipple clamps,” she told me later. “They are more intense. The stakes hurt when you take them off and you can use them anywhere. It was really good. ”
“With the ankles,” chipped in another underwear in green ADDICT pants and a collar that says “SLUT,” “is stringing them together to make a“ zipper. ”You can put them to the side and remove them all at once like ‘vvvzzzzttt ‘. Or very slowly, one at a time.
“One of the fun things about using household items is that it gives you the ability to look at something around the house and feel excited and playful,” Scarlett said. “When the guests arrive, you can have a smirk on the back of your head – only you know the secret secret behind the object lying around. I think that’s part of the appeal.
We used the spatula, but I couldn’t keep up with it. The cane, on the other hand, worked like a treat – tap, tap, false tap, taptaptaptap. Stroke. Taptaptaptap. Cut. Taptaptaptap; then cool the surface with ice from your drink. “This rod really hurts,” the sub told me. “It was good. As long as you caress afterwards, it’s intense then it’s good.
An impact play session in a BDSM studio.
She still thought it was better to use a cane from a sex shop. “I would say it’s more precise, so it makes safety easier,” she said. “Accuracy is very important because you don’t want to touch the spine or the kidneys. Using the cane is an art form.
Scarlett echoed the idea, also highlighting security considerations. “Rods are advanced tools that can leave quite nasty marks, due to the toy’s small surface area and relative hardness,” she warned. “They should be avoided by beginners or those with little experience with impact play. Bamboo is a tricky material to work with because it can break very easily.
I headed to a BDSM studio in North London the following week to further investigate. In the interest of journalism and fun, I got tripled by two women and a man. I was face down on a bench with one sitting on my head, while the other two went into town. The metal spatula was okay and made a pleasant clicking sound against my skin, but it was only good to warm me up – so it didn’t hurt enough. The stakes were lined up on my side and moved with a feather duster, twisted and torn off one by one. It hurts, in a good way.
“Green?” the guy asked, fixing the back of my neck with the pointed end of the cane. I said yes in a strangled voice. “Okay, turn up the intensity by 20 percent,” he asked the others. “You’re doing very well,” the woman playing the good cop assured me, as the banging of the bamboo rained down on my body until it twisted and, like the wooden pole, shattered. It might have been cheap, but it didn’t last.
“For the first half, most of the impact play was the spatula,” the dom explained later. “Then you hit harder and harder with the canes; just as you did “argh” and arch your back, we lowered the speed and the intensity. Once someone gets to that point, you don’t have to hit them hard at all to achieve the same effect.
One of the women in the studio replaced it using sandpaper. It was gently scraped against her skin and laid on a surface she could lean on. “Oh my god, everything is fine – I loved it,” she said. “When I was leaning over the glass being pushed into it, I had a really different feeling. And when someone makes you kneel on it, it really hurts.
Looks like DIY toys can be fun, then you can just head to a vanilla shop and buy transport like mine for £ 14.10 if you’ve booked an Airbnb and forgot your toys – just make sure you know what you’re doing and if not, seriously research safer play practices to minimize any damage potential. From a long-term perspective, however, it’s best to invest in the right tools for the job. A Homebase bamboo stick won’t last long once it starts to get used to disciplining people.
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