PairOfDimes
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Joined: 7/20/2006
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The type of cane a beginner should use depends on the sensations he or she wants to provide/receive. If light, surface sensations are desired, go for something around 1/4" in rattan. If muscular stimulation and heft are desired, something heavier, in metal or synthetic (delrin is good, also hard rubber--although hard rubber delivers surface sensations too), with a diameter of 1/2" or greater, might be a better choice. As with most implements, shorter ones are easier to control, but longer ones aren't impossible.
For a beginning cane set, I would advise going to a hardware store and buying rods that look interesting. Rods for controlling blinds, PVC and copper pipes, light steel dowels, pine dowels, rods for hanging shower curtains, covered wire that looks amenable to twisting. If you have a sizeable East Asian community, you could go to your Chinatown and buy a set or two of cooking chopsticks--essentially twenty-five cent tapered bamboo canes. Bamboo isn't to everyone's taste, but I do like it. You can get an idea of the different sensations that I tried to describe above, for relatively little cost. No sense outfitting yourself with a set of attractive and costly light, flexible canes if you go for deep tissue stimulation! My favorite (and most requested!) canes are a 3/8" diameter, rather long rattan one, a baton about 1" in diameter and 18" long made of hard rubber, and a 24" rod for hanging shower curtains. For tops, it's good to whack the fronts of your thighs or the backs of your calves a few times, with each implement, to understand its sensation, and to understand how hard you need to work to develop a given strength of sensation.
It's good to practice on a striped or printed pillow, or on a mattress. Please use a pillow that you no longer like to sleep or lounge on. Repeated cane strokes will render lumpy synthetic stuffing. Develop aim: precision is hot. Realize that canes can be used in a number of different ways. Rapid, light taps with little follow-through provide a different sensation from quick strokes snapping the wrist back to hit with the very tip of the cane. For what many regard as a "normal" cane stroke (at least five seconds between strikes, some follow-through, contact with the shaft onto flesh, leaves a line-shaped mark), know that that can differ according to whether you incorporate the tip of the cane into the stroke. Significantly moving just the wrist, the wrist and forearm, the wrist, forearm, and shoulder, and wrist, arm, and back, will each offer you different results. That's how you train to use a cane--you hit stuff, and you hit yourself, you see what happens, and you file that information away. Avoid hitting people until you have a decent idea of what happens when you hit stuff in all the different ways you've developed to hit stuff. Without being able to watch you and push your elbow and fingers into optimal positions, I can't tell you more than that--and it's not like needles or sounds, you don't really need hands-on instruction, although it's often nice.
It is safe to strike any part of the body, except the eyes, (and possibly the front of the neck, as I think about it--other parts may not be safe to hit, but if a body part didn't occur to me as fun to hit, I didn't look into its anatomy and safety) with a cane. It just depends on how you do it. It is not wise to haul off and do a full-arm strike with a rubber baton on top of the knuckles. But if you take that hand, turn it over, and do shorter, rapping strokes on the palm with that same baton, or even harder strokes with a light, sting-providing cane, that, I would argue, is a safe degree of risk. As a rule, you don't want to cane bony areas with heavy, rigid implements (see above, metal canes), especially joints. Areas friendly to heavy cane impact include buttocks and thighs, chest and breasts, calves if muscles are relatively well developed, and upper back, abdomen, and upper arms (not generally good for people with little muscle or fat). You can cane the genitals, even with heavy things, although it's generally wise to avoid much follow through. You can cane the face, and it's easier to do so with very light things.
How do you learn to bottom to a cane? It's a kind of impact sensation, sometimes painful, so you apply whatever tools you have for processing intense sensation to it. Bottoming to pain in general is a huge topic, and I assume that's not what you're asking here. From looking at a cane, you can deduce that it's a fairly specific and narrow sensation, irrespective of whether it's "thuddy" and deep or "stingy" and superficial. If you have a sense of whether you prefer deep or superficial sensations, you might have an idea of the kinds of canes you would prefer. If it's to your taste, you might do a scene with lots of feedback and communication the first time you play with canes--a friend of mine likes to call such playtime "lab scenes."
Canes are fun, varied, and versatile! Enjoy exploring a new toy!
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Canes, a beginner's guide - 
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) before you buy.
...I have to say I like the Serpent's Bit toy I designed myself the best. One handle, two fiberglass rods protruding from the handle about 26 in. with about 1/4 in to 1/2 in. spacing between them...it is sting-ey, it colors the area up quickly with little force and the more force that is applied, the better marks that are left and, due to the close placement of the rods, it is wayyyyyyyy 'bite-y'. The last submissive I used it on called me after her plane flight home and told me what an interesting time she had sitting on the plane flight home.
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