Lashings
You can add even more variety to your scenes by incorporating a bondage frame. These are often made by add rods of bamboo, perhaps tied together in some form of frame.
While bamboo is great for this, you can use other rod-shaped objects. It can be natural sticks, dowels, rods, pipe, broom sticks, hockey sticks, … whatever fits the mood you want to set! One weakness with smooth rods like dowels and pipe is that the Lashing can sometimes be worked free if your partner can twist the rod. The bumps on bamboo or natural sticks usually prevent this attack from succeeding.
There are many cool ideas for a bondage frame. A-frames are popular, as are Crosses/T-Frames or X-frames, but there are many others you could create … including ones that are 3D (cubes, pyramids, tesseracts, etc … well, maybe not a tesseract…)
In order to make a bondage frame, you will need to connect the various pieces together. “Lashing” is the term for the types of knots used for this purpose.
Here are a few lashing techniques you may find helpful:
This is a simple method to get a fairly good grip and is the often used as the starting point or to finish off a Lashing
This knot grips much more firmly and is much more difficult to undo. This is a good choice when you would like the lashing to be permanent.
Lashings
- To connect two sticks between 60° and 90°, use the Square-Lashing
- To connect two sticks between 0° and 30°, use the Sheer-Lashing
- To connect two sticks between 20° and 70°, use the Diagonal-Lashing (in practice, I don’t often use this)
Question: Would a lark’s head or prusik knot be a decent way to start these lashings, similar to a clove? I’ve tried it once or twice and seemed fine.
That can work fine as well. This tutorial is based on the classic Scouts method, which is based on the method shown in the Ashley Book of Knots, I believe. But there are many other variations that work just as well.
Do you have anyone that you recommend for online ordering of bamboo?
I do not. I have a large farm supply store near me (Fleet Farm) that carries it. The quality is all sorts of random, but if you don’t mind going a few times you can get good piece over time. I have never bought from them, but googling got me to this site, which look promising: https://www.foreverbamboo.com/bamboo-poles.html
Do you have a supplier that you recommend for purchasing bamboo?
I do not. I have a large farm supply store near me (Fleet Farm) that carries it. The quality is all sorts of random, but if you don’t mind going a few times you can get good piece over time.