Lets call this lesson “Handy BDSM Toy Shopping Tip #2,365…. Buying A Flogger for BEGINNERS.” The advice I give below is based on decades of using and buying floggers as well as what I personally teach clients. At the end of the lesson you will find several links to help you buy a quality flogger if you desire a good flogger in your BDSM Toy inventory.
To begin, lets discuss a few key points about Floggers, as the variety out there ranges from absolute junk you would never want to use, to normal priced floggers that are great for beginners, all the way to high-priced, immaculately handcrafted toys that will be an absolute joy to use for years and years to come. 🙂
NUMBER OF TAILS
First, we need to think about the number-of-tails (also called “falls” or “strands” etc), and types of leather (vegans – don’t worry I have a link for you at the very end as well – the principles are still the same even for non-leather floggers). You might think “more tails is better” but that’s not always the case. From personal experience I can say that between 20-30 tails is generally ideal. More than that and it gets heavy and potentially unwieldily due to too much weight for people who are new to swinging a flogger, and less than that can have the opposite effect and be too light or equally unwieldily in that there is not enough weight to get good momentum into your swing.
TYPES OF LEATHER
As for leather types you have the following considerations: Suede, Soft Leather, Stiff Leather, and Hard Leather, and of course the origin – cow, deer, kangaroo, etc. Although you may see some highly experienced Tops and Doms swinging extra long, extra heavy floggers on their devoutly masochistic partners, this is NOT recommended for Beginners. You want a light or medium-weight flogger that is well made, and the tails should ideally be between 18-24 inches long. Longer than that takes more skill to swing, and shorter than that is often harder to build up the right momentum to make the tails land nicely where you want them to land with a good, solid, light-to-medium pleasurable impact.
Suede is by far the softest route, but don’t let that fool you into thinking its ineffective! A good suede flogger can be a WONDERFUL warm-up toy when used lightly, and even make a decent medium-intensity toy when swung powerfully, albeit with a deliciously smooth impact. FYI, you will not get a heavy-impact swing with a pure suede flogger, which again makes it great for Beginners as it’s nearly impossible to over-do it with a pure suede flogger.
Soft Leather is the most common leather found in floggers and a great place to start as a Beginner. Whether its cowhide (the most common) or buffalo or antelope, etc, the weight of the soft leather can vary widely. Buffalo for example is a very heavy leather, but if tanned to buttery softness the swing can still land a highly enjoyable medium-intensity impact. However, also due to that same weight, buffalo hide can impact with very high intensity, so maybe save the buffalo hide flogger for when you have a lot more experience swinging floggers as well as a partner who enjoys that level of higher intensity. Best for beginners to start with plain old, soft cowhide. Antelope (deer) or kangaroo is often gorgeous leather and might feel incredible upon impact, but those speciality leathers will definitely cost more.
Hard Leather, to be brief, is best avoided until you are Very Skilled at swinging a flogger. The stiffness that accompanies Hard Leather floggers almost universally makes them harder to use for anything other than a very intense impact, and thus they are NOT recommended for Beginners.
KINDS OF FLOGGERS
Next, lets talk Kinds Of Floggers. There is the basic one you see everywhere, there is the Cat-O-Nine-Tails style, and there are super-soft versions that look like a flogger but do not serve the same purpose.
The basic version of a Flogger mainly described above, as generally seen in the Global BDSM Community, will hopefully have a nice balance point right where the tails join the handle, + / – no more than a few inches. Badly balanced floggers are actually still usable – especially after a few years of swinging floggers so you understand the dynamic – but when the handle is balanced it becomes a joy to swing and much easier to use. The handle can come in MANY forms: intricately and beautifully wrapped leather braids for a superb grip, a simple leather covering over a dowel, or even carved wood that has been smoothly lacquered. The most important factor regarding the handle is that it feels good – and most importantly – SECURE in your hand. The fancier the wrapping or crafting of the handle, the more expensive the flogger will be…but not always as some flogger makers always craft nice handles as part of every flogger they make.
Note that there are also various “alternative handles” like loops of leather that slip over your fingers for example, and which again are best left for after you have gained experience swinging a normal-handled flogger. You can also find “nun-chaku” (the Japanese two-handle weapon made famous by Bruce Lee) style handles that are made with multiple parts to the handle with each part connected by chain or rope…. again these are NOT for Beginners and much harder to swing as compared to a simple, one-piece, solid normal handle. For beginners, your first floggers should be ones where the tails are connected directly to the handle in a standard manner with nothing in between.
The Cat-O-Nine-Tails style is a slightly more advanced flogger, but ok once you get the hang of the dynamics of swinging a flogger. It’s long and light-weight, but with nine or so long & thin braided tails that have ends similar to what you find in a Single Tail Whip (q.v.), and these tails often start after a short length of “single-tail-style” whip portion towards the handle. When used flogger-style it can be incredibly pleasurable to the recipient, and as your skills develop you can learn to snap it like a Single Tail as well. A proper Cat-O-Nine-Tails style of flogger / whip will also often leave small dots (tiny speckled bruises) on the recipient. This style of flogger is MUCH harder to craft, and as such it is generally going to cost a significant amount, usually a few hundred dollars. The general consensus is that the very best Cat-O-Nine-Tails come out of Australia and are made from kangaroo hide.
Note that:
a) I am talking about Cat-O-Nine-Tails that are well-made toys hand-crafted from SOFT leather,
b) You should AVOID the awful fake-toys sold in “Adult Stores” where they use incredibly cheap hard leather strips (or even cheap patent leather) woven into thick, clunky braids that will be impossible to swing well and will Break The Skin of the person on the receiving end, and
c) Always try to buy your BDSM toys from a Reputable BDSM Toy Maker.
You should avoid ever buying from any sort of generic “adult toy” company who sells utter junk. How to spot these crap-shops? They tend to sell lots of lube and dildos, lots of odd kinky items that come in a box with a porn person on the cover, the quality even looks like someone made it in their sleep and looks better suited to a Halloween costume rather than actual play, and their BDSM toy selection is an obvious after-thought to just trying to sell you any junk-quality sex toys they can buy in bulk from China. No Thank You.
The last category, Super Soft floggers, usually means that rabbit fur (or the like) is a key component. Either the entire “flogger” is made from strips of rabbit fur, or else rabbit fur is interspersed with regular soft leather tails. As you can probably imagine the impact is extremely soft, which means it cannot really be used for “impact” play. It makes a great pre-warm-up or post-scene-cool-down toy. It can also be used as a surprisingly erotic skin tease mid-scene after other floggers and toys have been used to “warm up” the skin. As I have taught in my workshops, rabbit fur feels nice when rubbed on your skin with no other warm up, but after the skin is warmed up with some flogging and play then that same fur becomes Super-Fur! 🙂
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR… MOSTLY
Let me stop here and say something VERY important – You Get What You Pay For. If you see a so-called “flogger” online for $20 its going to be badly made junk. Sarah Heartwood was one of the very best flogger makers alive, the leather was superb, and the handles gorgeous…. but you could not get a Heartwood flogger for under $180. This does NOT mean that you “must” pay that much to get started with floggers, but you should expect to pay $40-$60 at the Very Minimum for a decent flogger, and really probably closer to $100-$120 for something that you and your partner will enjoy for many years to come. Yes I paid $180 for that gorgeous Heartwood flogger – and that was a bargain – and yes I still have it in my main toy bag as one of the very best toys that I own, and have absolutely no regrets about paying that $180 almost 20 years ago. In the intervening years quite honestly Every Single Person who has been on the receiving end of that Heartwood flogger LOVES IT. Worth every penny. 🙂
Caveat: I have indeed seen vastly over-priced floggers on occasion from random vendors (NOT the ones I list below for whom I can vouch). It’s not that they are not hand crafted with the best intentions, its just that the maker has set a price point that neither respects nor represents the cost of any sort of actual High Quality in the manufacturing of that flogger (as opposed to very genuine and obvious quality like Sarah Heartwood), and they want to charge Heartwood level prices (e.g. what you expect to pay for only the most superb craftsmanship) for a very average flogger of average craftsmanship, no fancy braids, a basic wood handle of ordinary wood, etc.
Example: At the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco one year I saw an intriguing hand-crafted flogger with a nice wood handle and very long, very plain olive-green heavy suede tails. It was one of the very few floggers that caught my eye that day (I own a LOT of toys, so to be a consideration for my BDSM Toy Collection it needs to stand out in some way). Upon checking the price I saw they wanted $300 and I just laughed. At best this flogger was worth $120-$150 due to the cost of materials and labor. The actual workmanship in the flogger was extremely average and there really was nothing at all of a fancy nature to warrant that ridiculous price they were asking. Needless to say I moved on and did not buy it.
Beware “keychain floggers” made from parachute cord or strings of hard leather on the end of a key chain clip. These are junk. Don’t waste your money.
UNUSUAL FLOGGERS – NOT FOR BEGINNERS!
Other floggers to AVOID (as a Beginner) include floggers made of metal (e.g. chain-mail), floggers with metal tips on the end of the tails, and floggers with knots woven into the tails. All of these are actually more decorative than utilitarian. A metal flogger might have been a genuine torture device in the Middle Ages, but as a modern BDSM Toy the number of people who will actually enjoy it are VERY few and far-between. For 99% of the people who enjoy flogging – and especially for Beginners – a metal flogger sucks, it’s far too painful, and it will ruin your scene. Hang it on the wall as a show piece and leave it there. Metal tips will tear the skin and hurt like hell as well. Knots woven into the tails also hurt like hell and push the flogger (usually hard to wield anyway) straight into the extreme masochism category, and do not make a good general use toy.
If you are lucky enough to have a BDSM Toy Store near you and you can walk in and try out a few floggers before you buy then I recommend you do that. Almost every shop of this kind which I have been in around the world will be perfectly happy to have you use the flogger on your own arm to gauge the feel, and often equally happy to allow you to do a few “test swings” on your partner (with their clothes on of course). This way you will be able to experience for yourself everything I have described here in this lesson.
SWINGING A FLOGGER – A FEW BASICS
So now that you have your first flogger, here is one GREAT way to start understanding how to swing a flogger BEFORE you practice on your partner. Take a big, soft, fluffy pillow and prop it up on the couch. Fluff it into a rice roundish shape. Begin swinging the whip in a figure-8 manner from side to side with the intersection of the figure-8 directly in front of you. Your goal here is that when the tails are coming back to the intersection point then THAT is when you want the tips to strike the center of the pillow and leave a nice indentation spot where it landed. Keep swinging until you get a large number of successive strikes to land in that same spot. The pillow is a great feedback tool because it will show you clearly how good – or off – your aim is when you swing the flogger. Practice practice practice!
Another quick trick is to stand sideways, like in a classic fencing stance, and bend your knees a bit. Try to use the strength of your wrist more than your forearm for momentum. Flogging relies on the wrist for accuracy far more than the rest of the arm. In that “fencing stance” (q.v.) it also makes it easier to shift your position in small amounts closer/towards or farther/away from the Bottom receiving the flogger so you can really get those tails to land very accurately.
On a human body, never let the tips go above the shoulder-line as they could accidentally wrap around and strike an eye. Also, it’s best to keep the tails landing in a zone starting roughly from about halfway between the waist and the bottom of the shoulder blades, and running from there up to the shoulder line (more or less the entire upper half of the back; NOT the Low Back, and NOT above the shoulder line). This is “The Sweet Spot” of Flogging, and feels GREAT to 99% of people being flogged within their limits and thresholds. In fact, I have genuinely lost count of the number of recipients who will later describe the experience as a kind of “unusual massage!” Yes, it’s THAT pleasurable! 🙂
When you and your partner are ready to add Flogging to your scenes, like everything else when you are new to BDSM or with a new partner… Start Lightly. It’s always better to hear the Bottom / Submissive say, “Could you go a little more intense please?” rather than “Ouch!” or have to use a Safeword. And remember, *** Every Person’s Thresholds Can Be Different ***. Just because some other submissive you know likes it extra intense or extra gentle does not mean anything for the person you are flogging now. That’s yet another reason to start gently and ramp it up to where the bottom / submissive indicates they are in their peak zone of enjoying the flogging. 🙂
Stay Tuned for The Crow Academy educational video series on Flogging – coming soon !!
Have fun! 🙂
Check out the various links below for more ideas and places to buy a good flogger.
Simply click on the link below to be taken to the appropriate website….
For more information on choosing a flogger, these guys have a good “How To Pick A Flogger” page:
Frisky Business Boutique
Happy Tails Floggers maintains a standard of producing high quality Floggers. They have been at it for a long time, and it shows. Their website also nicely leads you through the pros & cons of the many kinds of leather they make available. I own several quality floggers from these guys:
Happy Tails Floggers
Bunny Floggers makes quality standard floggers that are good quality and good prices, and other toys as well. They are happy to take custom orders, and the range of designs and materials to choose from is impressive:
Bunny Floggers
The following Cat-O-Nine-Tails flogger / “galley whip” is like the one I own personally – its a FANTASTIC whip!!…. but pricey. Still absolutely worth adding one to your collection when you are ready. These guys also make a nice selection of standard floggers as well:
Kangaroo Cat-O-Nine-Tails Whip
The Kink Shop also hand-makes all of their toys, with plenty of customization options. I own and enjoy a set of their unique “swivel finger-loop” floggers, which due to not having a traditional handle makes them very easy to fit into a suitcase when traveling:
The Kink Shop
I do not own a flogger from Details Toys, but according to their reviews and many testimonials from people in the BDSM Community, they seem to know what they are doing and offer a huge selection of customization options:
Details Toys Floggers
Of course our friends at Leather Etc not only sell floggers, but they will also give you 10% off of EVERYTHING you purchase there with the secret sales code “INIQUITY” (no quotes). Amongst other things Leather Etc also sells the infamous Bungee Cord Flogger which is a unique light-to-medium stingy flogger, that is quite affordable and also makes a great addition to your toy collection:
Leather Etc Shop
And because I want to respect the Vegans into BDSM, here is a link to a company on Etsy who makes Vegan floggers. PLEASE NOTE: The use of plastics and rubber in the creation of floggers and similar toys creates a very different set of dynamics in the way the toy will “swing.” While you can test that dynamic if buying in person, I strongly suggest that if buying a vegan toy online you ask about the vendor’s return policy in the event that the toy simply will not perform properly due to the materials:
A Flogger For Vegans
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