# Implements and what each one does > Hand, hairbrush, paddle, strap and cane: what each one feels like, how forgiving it is, and the specific way each one goes wrong. Written from both ends of it. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/implements/ - Section: Safety and practice - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. People buy implements the way they buy kitchen knives, on looks and price, and then wonder why the results are unpredictable. What actually separates them is how much area the force lands on and how much warning you get before something goes wrong. --- ## In short - The hand is the safest implement because it hurts the person swinging it. Nothing else has that feedback built in. - Canes concentrate force into a narrow line and split skin with almost no progressive warning. - The tip of anything you swing travels fastest and furthest, which is how people accidentally hit a hip. - Spend the first dozen strokes with any new implement finding out where it lands, not how hard it goes. A rough map before the detail. Broad and heavy produces deep bruising and a dull ache. Narrow and fast produces surface sting, welts and, past a point, split skin. Flexible follows the shape of the body. Rigid argues with it. > **A word about the pictures.** The implement images on this page are AI-generated, and I would rather they were not. The reason is copyright. Stock libraries are the obvious alternative and they are a minefield for a site like this one, since the preview files people usually end up with are not licensed for publication and the agencies do pursue it. Generating them avoids that entirely. > > > > They are close enough to show you what the object looks like, which is all they are for, but where a picture and the text disagree, trust the text. > **Longer versions.** This page is the overview. There is now a page on [each implement in detail](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/) covering what it is made of, how it marks, what it costs in the UK, and how to improvise or avoid one: [hand](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/hand/), [hairbrush](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/hairbrush/), [slipper](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/slipper/), [wooden spoon](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/wooden-spoon/), [paddle](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/paddle/), [strap](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/strap/), [tawse](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/tawse/), [cane](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/cane/), [crop](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/crop/), [ruler](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/ruler/), [belt](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/belt/), [flogger](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/flogger/) and [improvised](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/improvised/). | Implement | Sensation | Forgiving? | How it fails | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Hand | Flat spreading heat | Very | Rings, and your own knuckles on a hip | | Hairbrush | Hard, concentrated smack | Less than it looks | Landing on the rim, deep bruising | | Paddle | Broad push into the muscle | Moderate | Corners, and day-two bruising | | Strap or tawse | Slap over a thud | High | Wrap, and too much length | | Cane | A line, then a delayed second wave | Least | Split skin, with little warning | ## The hand Broad, flat, forgiving. A cupped hand thuds, a flat hand stings, and the heat builds and spreads outward and stays for a good while afterwards. It is the safest thing there is, and the reason is not the surface area. It is that it hurts you too. Your own pain tolerance sits directly in the circuit as a governor, and no other implement has one. You physically cannot deliver a stroke hard enough to cause serious injury without your own hand objecting first. That single fact is why every warm-up should start here and why the first session with anyone new should barely go beyond it. A hand also gives you information. You can feel the skin heating, the tissue firming, the point at which it has had enough. Nothing with a handle tells you that. It fails rarely, and mostly through jewellery: rings will split skin, so take them off, along with bracelets and watches. ## The hairbrush ![An oval wooden hairbrush](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/img/hairbrush.webp) An oval wooden hairbrush. Small face, dense and heavy for its size, which is why it stings out of proportion to its bulk. The domestic classic, and the most underestimated object in the house. A wooden back, an oval surface not much bigger than a palm, more mass than it appears to have, and a short handle that means it accelerates fast. It feels much harder than its size suggests, with a lot of bite and very little spread. It bruises deeply and it bruises quickly. People swing a hairbrush as though it were a hand, because it is a familiar household object and their body treats it like one, and it is not a hand. How it fails: the rim. Landed flat it is fine. Landed at an angle it puts everything through a couple of square centimetres of edge, which is how you get a hard, tender lump that lasts a fortnight. It also bounces off the body, which spoils aim on the next stroke. Check for metal fittings, a hollow back that can crack, or bristles on the striking side. ## Paddles ![A long wooden paddle with drilled holes and a turned handle](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/img/paddle.webp) A wooden paddle. Broad face, so the force spreads and the sensation is thuddy rather than sharp. The drilled holes cut air resistance, which makes it faster and stingier than a solid one of the same size. Broad and heavy, so the sensation is a shove that spreads through the muscle rather than a sting on the surface. Leather is thuddy and warm. Wood is louder and sharper. Thin wood stings, thick wood is a blunt push, and both leave you aching the following day more than anything else on this list. Holes, since everyone asks: they reduce air resistance so the paddle moves faster. That is a genuine effect. The story about them creating suction is nonsense. How it fails: corners and edges. A paddle landing at an angle drives one corner in and concentrates the entire load. A heavy one carries real momentum, so the follow-through is longer than you expect. The sneakier failure is that broad implements produce deep bruising that does not show up until the second day, so people happily carry on because nothing looks bad yet. ## Straps and the tawse ![A heavy leather tawse](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/img/strap.webp) A heavy leather tawse. Flexible, spreads its force, and far more forgiving than it looks. My preference for anything sustained. Flexible leather follows the contour of the body instead of fighting it, so the force ends up distributed across everything it touches. The sensation is a slap on top of a thud, wide and hot and loud, and it builds beautifully over a long session without the sudden steps you get from a cane. A tawse is a strap with the end split into two tails. It is mostly brought down across the palm (see [hands and the tawse](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/hands-and-the-tawse/)) and it works perfectly well on a backside, where the split tails land fractionally apart and give it a distinctive double crack. How it fails: length and wrap. The commonest strap accident is a strap that is simply too long for the room or the person swinging it, so the last few inches land somewhere nobody intended, usually the hip or over the far side. A stiff, thick strap landing on its edge rather than its face will also catch and split skin over a bony area. ## Canes ![A crook-handled rattan cane](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/img/cane.webp) A crook-handled rattan cane. Force concentrated into a narrow line, and the least forgiving thing in common use. The cane has a different failure mode from everything else, and it deserves respect rather than reverence. The sensation is a line. What surprises people first is that the impact itself is often less dramatic than expected, and then five to ten seconds later a second wave arrives that is considerably worse. That delay is the reason people accept "one more" and then discover they have taken six more than they meant to, and it is why strokes should be spaced. The marks are distinctive: a pale central line with bruising to either side of it, the tramline. That pattern is broken capillaries around the line of compression, and it is the most recognisable mark you can leave on a person. It also lasts. See [marks and bruising](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/marks-and-bruising/). How it fails: all the force goes through a strip a few millimetres wide, and skin splits with almost no progressive warning. There is no gradual slide from pink to red to broken. There is red, red, red, split, usually because several strokes have landed on the same line. Vary the placement, count the strokes, and look at the skin between them rather than at the person's face. Materials matter here more than elsewhere. Rattan flexes, absorbs part of the impact and is the standard for good reason. Acrylic and delrin flex differently, are often heavier, do not absorb a misjudged stroke the same way, and are much less forgiving than they look. Garden bamboo splinters and should never go anywhere near a person. ## Wrap-around The most common accidental injury in impact play, and it is a geometry problem rather than a strength problem. Anything you swing is rotating, so the tip travels faster and further than the middle. On a cane the difference between the centre of the shaft and the last three inches is large. If the implement is aimed at the far edge of the target, the tip does not stop at the far edge. It carries round the curve of the hip, where the bone is directly under the skin, and lands considerably harder than anything else in the stroke. Four things fix it. Aim at the centre and let the implement finish short of the far side. Stand so that the far edge of the target sits at the end of your reach rather than past it. Use something shorter in a small room. And if you cannot actually see the far side of the body from where you are standing, move until you can. > **The first dozen strokes.** With any new implement, spend the first dozen strokes finding out where it lands rather than how hard it can go. Light, deliberate, and watching the mark rather than the reaction. You are calibrating distance, angle and the arc of the tip. It takes two minutes, it is dull, and it prevents nearly every accident I have witnessed. ## What I would buy first Start with your hand, which costs nothing, and then a slipper, which costs very little. After that, one mid-weight leather strap, deliberately not a long one. That combination covers almost everything for the first year and you will learn more from it than from a drawer full of objects. A cane comes later, once you can put three strokes in a row where you meant to put them. Whatever you buy, avoid metal, bolts, staples and seams that stand proud of the surface, and sand any wooden thing that is not already smooth. Half the objects sold as spanking implements were designed by someone who has never used one. ## Read next - [Where it is safe to strike](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/where-it-is-safe-to-strike/) - [Marks and bruising](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/marks-and-bruising/) - [Does it hurt?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/does-it-hurt/) - [Hands and the tawse: what the palm can take](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/hands-and-the-tawse/) - [Buying implements discreetly](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/buying-implements-discreetly/) ## Common questions ### What is the best implement for a beginner? The hand, then a slipper, then a mid-weight leather strap. The hand is the safest thing there is because it hurts the person using it, which puts a governor directly in the circuit. A slipper adds an implement with almost no new risk. A strap follows the shape of the body and spreads its force, so it is hard to injure someone with. Canes are for later. ### Why does a cane hurt so much more than a paddle? Because it puts the same force through a line a few millimetres wide instead of across a broad surface. A cane also produces a delayed second wave of pain five to ten seconds after impact, which is why people miscount and take more than they intended. It is the least forgiving implement in common use and the one most likely to split skin. ### What is wrap-around? When the far end of an implement carries past the target and lands on the side of the hip or the far buttock. The tip travels fastest and furthest, so it hits harder than the middle, and the hip has bone directly under the skin. It is the single most common accidental injury in impact play and it is a positioning problem, not a force problem.