Rope Coiling


Coiling bondage rope almost always has the following goals:

  • The center of the rope should be at the end of the coil, where it is easy to find; you can undo the coil and be left holding the center bight, without having to search for it
  • The rest of the rope can be dropped from the loosened coil onto the floor, and be relatively untangled and ready to use; it's not necessary to flake (untangle from end to end) the rope before use
  • You want to minimize the amount of twist introduced into the rope; a twisted-up rope will tangle during use

Additionally, you'll need to make a tradeoff between two more goals:

  • It's nice to be able to undo the coil easily -- with one hand and gravity alone, or one hand and a flick, or one hand and teeth
  • It's also nice for the coil to reliably not come undone in your bag; unfortunately the more secure it is, the harder that makes it for you to undo

At the simpler and less secure end of the spectrum, you can coil in a figure 8, followed by a bight tucked in the wraps.

An improvement in security over that is to pass through the end of the bundle; however the resulting coil is no longer pull-to-release. You can transform that into a pull-to-release bundle by tucking a bight through the bundle end, in the same way as the above method tucks one under the wraps (i.e. it is a bight of the doubled bight-end; a double-bight). You'll want to then shove the wraps towards the end of the bundle to pinch it in place.

You can make coiling the rope significantly faster by folding a longer figure 8; that video also shows two alternative pass-through methods for the end, one very secure, the other reasonably pull-to-release.

Erin Houdini has an interesting variation on Kink Academy, if you have an account there.

Rope365 has an overview of coiling methods and a table of pros/cons here.