Rope Treatment – Charred Halo

OK so you’ve bought your first rope and now you want more and more and more….

I decided to bulk buy and treat my own. I did a bit of reading to come up with a good method of dying the rope…

Steps

Choose and buy your bulk rope. I went for 50m of 6mm Jute from ebay, kicking myself later as I could have got 100m of 6mm Jute from AliExpress.
Get a big pot to cook in! I managed to get a 12L stock pot from ebay for about £15, its cheap and nasty and would be terrible for making food in but should be perfectly adequate for dying bondage rope!
Cut your rope to length and whip the ends. I went for a white cotton for the whipping in the hope that it would pick up the dye and go a similar colour to the rope.
Burn off the fluffies. Run a lighter over your rope to take off the fluffy bits…. then after 10 minutes switch to doing it over the gas stove as its way easier. My whole house smells a bit smokey now after doing 50m of rope so you might want to do it outside on a camping stove.
Boil (simmer) the rope to soften it. Simmer and stir it occasionally for 1 hour.
Tip out into the sink
Dissolve the dye in 500ml of hot water (I used two lots of dye in a liter) in a separate container.
Fill the pot back up with hot tap water (hot as it gets)
Add the salt and stir thoroughly
Tip in the dye
Chuck in the rope and work it for 15 minutes
Leave the rope fully submerged overnight.
Stretch the rope out to dry, I tied it around the rungs of a ladder
Work coconut oil into the rope to soften it and make it oh so smooth! (Other oils are available)

£15.74 –
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12-Litre-Deep-Mirror-Polished-Stainless-Steel-Casserole-Dish-Pot-Stockpot-Lid/253606319407?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

£2.59 –
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/50g-PACK-DYLON-FABRIC-CLOTHES-HAND-WASH-DYE-COLOURING-CHANGING-COLOUR-TO-CHOOSE/323257650836?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=512325682646&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

£13.99 –
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-X-PACKS-OF-BURLESQUE-RED-DYLON-FABRIC-CLOTHES-DYE-HAND-USE-50g-1-75oz/141271964916?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Burn off the fluffies. The hank on top is from the same batch of rope as the pile underneath which has been burned already.

Boiled for an hour, tipped into the sink sorted out the dye (see instructions above) chucked it in, agitated it for 20 minutes and then left it overnight. I then dried it by stretching it around a ladder…… yep fucking good idea if I say so myself. Tie one end to a rung and then wrap it around and around the ladder stretching it tight as you go… the soaking and boiling it up shrink it! Small downside is that while I was patting myself on my back I was so clever thinking of the ladder and being sure that I had taken all of the photos and telling myself I had taken all the photos as I untied and unwound all the rope again later…. I hadn’t, I have no photos of that step. Twat.

This is after I’ve rubbed a lot of coconut oil into the rope…. too much, so much that its died and solidified into white chunks again on the rope making it blotchy,

I’ve been working the rope and practicing ties and that’s all gone now and its looking fine!

OK so that went way better than expected! Usually version 1.0 of my projects is pretty good and I have a shite load of ideas and improvements for version 2.0…. this time I’m trying to document it really well as I’m going to do the same thing again.

So this first 50m cost me….

£16.45 – 50m Rope
£15.74 – Stock Pot
£2.59 – Salt
£13.99 – Dye
£6.49 – Oil

However after an initial investment I got enough dye and salt to do 100m. Ignoring the cost of the oil as I used too much and hardly made a dent on the pot! I could also have ordered 100m of rope from Aliexpress for the same price

£16.45 – 100m Rope
£2.59 – Salt
£13.99 – Dye
Total ~ £35/100m

£35 for 100m! That’s pretty damn good.

Attempt 2

So…… here’s my second run through. At some point I’ll edit this into some simple to follow instructions but what the hell, hear me waffle!

There was a couple of places where the rope looks as though it was spliced together… I didn’t like them so I cut them out. This had some impact on the final lengths of rope that I ended up with.

Out of 100m and after a lot of playing i’ve decided that my new ‘standard’ is going to be as follows:

4x 4.2m
3x 10m
1x 15m

This allows me to do a huge range of my ties…… I get annoyed at joining rope when I’m just that little bit short but having trailing excess doesn’t bother me in the slightest! I’m weird that way.

I cut hanks for a complete ‘standard’ in my new chosen colour…. forest green, plus a 15m length of the purple I did last time as I’ve found the lengths I’ve cut are often just a little short for some of the chest harnesses.

Hanks cut to length, plus a little bundle of left over!

Ends whipped appropriately. You can’t see from here but all the ends are whipped in black to match the eventual green dye…. except one of the 15m lengths which is whipped in white to match the previous batch as its going to be purple.

There should be something here about burning off the fluffies…. I used a hob, you draw the rope through the flame…. you regret not opening the windows earlier as it smells.

Simmer the rope for an hour, agitating it occasionally and checking it is all submerged.

Tip it all out into the sink.

Dissolve the salt in water

Dissolve the dye in warm water

Agitate the rope in the water for at least 15 minutes and then leave it overnight!

Tip it all out into the sink

Run water over the rope as you agitate it until the water starts to run (fairly) clear and most of the excess dye is off.

Chuck the rope into a pillowcase and put it through the the washing machine. I used a mixed load setting with washing powder but no softener.

Then you need to stretch out the rope as it dries, put a decent amount of tension on the rope. It took a couple of days for mine to dry out.

The next phase is to oil or wax the rope. I used coconut oil. Get a blob of oil in your hands and then run the rope through it… then run the rope through your hands over and over until the oil is soaked in and you have callouses.

The you’re done…

Here’s a comparison of the finished rope against the completely untreated rope… the treated one feels so much softer.

…And here’s a tie with my nice new green rope!