Affordable Hemp Rope – DIY

In the world of rope bondage there’s many options as to where you can purchase rope for your fun. Many of them specialize in wonderful rope offering a wide variety or material and colors to choose from. Well processed they take great pride in their work and do their best to keep costs down, I’m sure. However, in this day and age, it’s often a burden to afford their cost and people tend to opt out for nylon rope purchased at their local hardware store. Who can blame them; it’s a cheap and effective option.

When we first began our journey into bondage, I too picked up rope at Lowes Hardware. After diving deeper into bondage, I wanted to try Hemp. Searching high and low, I found the cost way too high for our budget. Then I came across Turkey Foot Trading Company who had rope for 24 cents a foot. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I jumped at the chance to purchase some. I knew I would have to process it after it arrived. But I didn’t care, for that price I was more than happy to learn how to process Hemp Rope.

When I received it, the rope smelled like it was right out of a barn. Thankfully, after I processed my rope the smell went away. I’ve had this rope for over a year now and it still looks and feels great.

Last week I found that we needed 200 feet more rope for a project. I went back to the one place where I knew I could afford it on our limited budget, Turkey Foot Trading Company. To my surprise, they still carried Hemp Rope. Wanting to find out more about their rope, I gave them a call and what I found out utterly surprised me.

Turkey Foot Trading Company claims to be the only importers of Hemp Rope in the U.S. and how they weren’t surprised at all to hear what I was using their rope for. She said “we sell our rope to lots of people for bondage at whole sale.” If their claim of being the only importers in the U.S. is indeed valid, that would mean that all the Hemp rope I’ve see for sale on rope specialty sites comes from them. Wow! I was in utter shock at the mark up for their rope. But, business is business and who can blame them. Not me, that’s for sure. They also told me how their rope was used in the new Lone Ranger movie and is also used for the BBC show Copper.

I also learned how wrong I was about their rope coming from the barn. Unknown to me, Hemp Rope has a natural hay smell when it’s unprocessed. Turkey Foot gets their rope straight from Romania and it’s shipped to their high tech storage and shipping facility. There it’s kept in a temperature controlled environment to ensure that it stays happy and healthy while waiting to be sold. Boy was I wrong thinking that this was a small business run out of their home and stables.

Being the thrifty shopper that I am, I’m sure we will be buying a lot more rope from them in the future.  

I bet you’re scratching your head right now and wondering if this could be true. I don’t see any reason why they would lie about to me about it.

Next question. Is their rope a good quality and safe? I would say yes. Their 6mm twisted Hemp rope has a breaking load of 404 pds. I’ve used it for over a year and to be honest with you, it’s held up great and still looks fantastic. Unlike other ropes that I purchased from Eden Fantasys, which have frayed on the edges and lost their vibrant coloring.

Turkey Foot Trading Company sells all diameters of Hemp Rope, webbing and even fabric. Plus you can buy it by the foot or spool.

Are you worried about processing your own rope? No need to fret, it’s surprisingly easy. A search of the internet will give you many options of how to process raw Hemp Rope. However, I’ve found one option that’s quick, easy, and effective.

Leon’s method has four steps

Cleaning – to remove dirt and chemicals from manufacturing

Singeing – to remove excess fuzzies from the rope so that it’s nice and smooth

Softening – makes the rope more pleasant for the skin by breaking up some of the fibers making it supple. This can happen through a number of methods, manually working the rope, running it back and forth around a tree/post or even tumbling in a dryer. Leon chooses to put his through the dryer. I however, choose to run my around a wooden chair.

Moistening – Hemp when un-oiled is very dry. Dry rope is unpleasant on the skin and to work with. Some common oils used to for this are Vaseline, jojoba, hemp, mink and almond. Avoid bio-degradable oils like vegetable oil because it will rot in your toy bag leaving behind a horrible smell.

What you need:

Washing machine

Gas stove, candle, or propane torch

Large pot or a pressure cooker

Rope

Oil of your choice

A place to stretch your rope

How to:

1. Leon suggests that you can pre-cut your rope to its desired lengths. However, I choose not to do this since the length can change durring processing. On the other hand, large uncut batches of rope can be difficult to work with. If you choose to cut your rope into workable pieces, tie over hand knots in the ends to ensure it doesn’t become unraveled while being treated.
2. Place your rope into a pillow case and run through the washer with a gentle detergent like Woolite.
3. Place the rope in the dryer until dry, leaving it in the pillow case to minimize the tangling  However, in the pillow case the rope fibers will not break up as well as drying it without the pillow case. This step is critical for making the rope soft.
4. De-tangle the rope and singed. The simplest method for this is to run the rope over a gas stove. You can also use a propane torch or candle. Be careful not to actually burn the rope. However, you will find this is surprisingly difficult to do.
5. There are many methods that call for manually rubbing your choice of oil on the rope to moisten it. However, because this step is labor intensive, Leon suggests skipping it and rather adding the oil in the next step.
6. Place the rope in a large pot or pressure cooker to boil and add a dollop of your preferred oil. In a pot many suggest boiling it for 6 to 8 hours. I choose to boil mine for about four hours, changing the water each time it gets low. In a pressure cooker, the smell of hay wont fill your house. Also, by boiling it in a pressure cooker at 10PSI will raise the boiling water’s temp by about 15 degrees C and causes the oil to emulsify and adhere to the rope slightly better.
7. After boiling, place the rope back in the dryer. I choose to skip this step and rather stretch the rope very tight around the back of my wooden chair and let it air dry.
8. Untangle and stretch the rope over a bed frame or other rigid surface for a few hours to re-tighten the lay. You many need to re-tighten up the stretch a couple of times during this period.
9. Cut to your desired length.

A few notes of importance.

All times/amounts are approximate. There is no exact science behind 10PSI for an hour.

The dollop of oil method can be replaced by manually adding oil to the rope and rubbing it through your hands. There’s no quality advantage to doing this.

Leon suggests that his method actually stretches the rope to larger then it was before processing. However, many other sites suggest that you loose approximately 10% due to shrinkage during the process.

I myself tend to lose length when I process it.

Easy and not too time consuming, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t at least try processing their own rope. For me, working my own rope gives me a stronger connection to it than rope I’ve purchased from Lowes Hardware.

Affordable, Turkey Foot Trading Company’s rope makes it possible for even those on a very limited budget to enjoy the art of rope bondage.