Cleaning and caring for implements

Most of this is a cloth and thirty seconds. The part that matters is knowing which of your things can be cleaned and which can only be wiped, because that decides who is allowed to use them and what happens the day one of them draws blood.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Everything here is about consenting adults over 18 and the objects two of them have agreed to use. The routine between sessions is warm water and a little washing-up liquid on a cloth for anything non-porous, a barely damp cloth for leather, and drying it properly before it goes away. Everything below is why that is as far as cleaning goes.

The one fact the rest of it hangs on

Some materials can be cleaned and some can only be wiped. Leather, wood, rattan and rope are porous, so fluid goes into the surface and sits where no cloth reaches, and what would actually sterilise them, meaning bleach or prolonged heat, destroys them on the way. The non-porous group is different. Silicone, metal, sealed acrylic and hard plastics have a surface that goes all the way down, so soapy water reaches everything and a disinfectant sits on what it is meant to kill.

The medical part I will keep narrow, because I am not qualified to widen it. Hepatitis B and C survive outside the body on surfaces, and that is the reason for this page rather than any general squeamishness about germs. Figures for how long they last vary, the ones I have seen do not agree, and picking one to hand you as a fact would be dishonest. What is not in dispute is that porous objects cannot be sterilised.

Which makes them personal kit

One person's cane. One person's tawse. With a single partner this is a non-issue and a strap is just a strap on a hook. With more than one there are two honest ways to take it: everybody has their own porous things, kept apart and recognisable at a glance, or the porous things stay at home and anything likely to break skin is non-porous. The surrounding conversation is at more than one partner.

If skin breaks while you are using it

Stop, say out loud that you are stopping, and cover it, all of which is on when the skin breaks. What happens to the implement is simpler than people want it to be. It belongs to that one person from then on, or it goes in the bin, and for anything porous there is no third option involving a spray.

I got this wrong for about a year. A cane of mine took a little blood at a party in 2016, I wiped it down at length, I was rather pleased with how thorough I had been, and I carried on using it on other people. Nothing came of it, which is luck rather than judgement. I was not being careless. I thought I had dealt with it.

Rattan

Rattan dries out as it ages, and dry rattan goes brittle and begins to fibre along the grain. A hairline first, then splinters, then a stroke that drives fibres into skin. So run it through your fingers end to end before every use and feel for the fault rather than looking for it, because a thumbnail finds a hairline long before an eye does. Anything raised or catching, anything gone stringy near the tip, and it is finished.

Keep canes off radiators and out of anywhere damp, and hang them or lay them flat, because one left leaning in a corner takes a permanent bend. How long a cane lasts I could not tell you. I have one eleven years old and sound, and I binned another after eight months. More on the material at the cane.

Leather

A barely damp cloth, a second cloth to dry it, then somewhere with air around it. Conditioner once or twice a year and no oftener, because over-oiled leather goes floppy and loses the weight that made you buy it.

Water followed by heat is what kills a strap. Never soak one and never put it near a radiator to hurry the drying, because leather that dries fast dries hard and cracks along every fold. Alcohol and household disinfectant strip the oils straight out, and a stiff pale edge cuts where a supple face slaps.

Wood

Paddles, hairbrushes, spoons and rulers develop two faults with age. Raised grain comes after wood has been damp a few times and leaves a face that takes skin off instead of reddening it, so run a thumb over the striking surface and the edges and sand anything proud with fine paper.

A hairline crack is the other, and that one ends the implement, because the crack carries on underneath where you cannot see it and the failure arrives mid-stroke. I have had a wooden spoon handle snap in my hand, and the half I was left holding had a point on it.

Where it lives

A bag or a drawer with some air in it. Not a sealed plastic box, where anything faintly damp stays damp and leather grows mould in a way that surprises people. Not a shed. Not a bathroom. Not the boot of a car in August, which cooks leather and warps rattan. The other half of storage is who else opens that drawer, and it matters at least as much. See setting and space.

Parties, and taking things with you

Bring your own and use your own. Do not lend, and decline when somebody holds out their cane, which happens more often than you would expect and is always meant generously. Any decently run venue takes the same line and a dungeon monitor will expect you to. If a party has no view on this at all, that tells you something about the party. More at play parties and clubs.

Secondhand

Used implements come up for sale, and for anything porous I would leave them alone. You cannot know the history, you cannot clean the object, and a stranger selling a strap has no reason to mention 2019. Wear is the quieter problem: a cane can look immaculate and be ready to splinter. Non-porous items wash properly, so there the only question is whether it is worn out.

The job of cleaning it

This gets treated as a joke and it is not one. Plenty of arrangements give the bottom the job of cleaning and oiling the implements, and it does something quite specific.

The objects stop being props that turn up when a scene starts and become things that live in the house and need looking after, like shoes. Handling one in daylight, when nothing is going to happen, is strange for most people who try it, and the strangeness is where the effect comes from.

Some find it settles the fear. Others find it does the reverse and turns an ordinary Sunday into a long slow piece of anticipation, and I know two people who asked to stop for that reason.

It also puts the inspection in the hands of the person the thing is used on, which I think is the strongest argument for it, though I hold that loosely. There is a story about it at the care of things.

When it goes in the bin

• A cane with a split anywhere along it, however small.
• Wood with a crack in it, or a handle gone loose in the head.
• Leather that has gone hard, pale, or cracked where it folds.
• Any rivet or screw working its way out of a handle.
• Anything that has drawn blood and is not staying with one person.

Cut a retired cane in half before you put it out. Otherwise it sits in the cupboard, and in a fortnight you will be standing there telling yourself that the split is quite small and there are eight good inches at the other end.