Mistress Talia: a sadistic domme

This will be the first of a series of articles about Heartwood whips. There's simply too much to say about these to cover in one review. There are many other fine whip makers, and I'll be discussing some of them in the future also. IMO, Heartwood makes the best floggers, cats and flat braided whips, but she doesn't make everything, so I have other whips too.

I have five Heartwoods personally, which seems ridiculously greedy, and yet, honestly, I want more. These whips are expensive and worth every nickel of the expense. I truly love these whips.

Heartwood whips are all made with leather of various sorts - deerskin, elksin, cowhide, bison, buffalo, moose. The leathers come in a wide range of colors, not just your typical read and black. Generally, the handles are covered in the typical diamond-pattern, with herringbone braid to finish. The hanging loops are made differently depending on the whip.

Today, I want to discuss two of my whips, a purple suede flat braided flogger and a red/black/silver cat o'nine tails. As you can see in spite of my crappy homemade photography, these whips are utterly gorgeous. The purple suede flat braid is dyed in such a manner that the braid forms a beautiful wheat-stalk pattern ending in a "flapper," the handle is a black and purple diamond pattern, and the loops is the same flat braid as the tails. Conversely, the cat has red and black tails, with the handle in a black and silver square pattern, the loop again complimenting the tails.

What you can't see no matter how many images I post is how utterly wonderful a Heartwood feels in your hand. The handles are weighted and just the right length to balance the tails, making the whips an absolute joy to use. The flat braid flogger is a relatively heavy whip, whereas the cat o'nine is nearly weightless.

You also can't see how they feel for the bottom. We need some vocabulary to discuss this sort of thing. There's three primary feelings that can be used to describe whips: thuddy, stingy and cutting. Thuddy is a deep, resonant kind of pain, sort of the "bass" of pain; an example would be the percussive type of pain experienced when someone beats back muscles with a fist during a deep muscle massage. Stingy pain is a shallower pain, experienced primarily on the skin; a good example of stingy would be a face slap. Cutting pain is pain that feels stingy, but feels that way *deeply*, as if the stinginess were in your muscles rather than on your skin; I can't think of a vanilla example of cutting pain, but if you've ever had a cane stroke, you know this type of pain.

The flat braid whip is pretty intense. Having a bit of weight to it, it has some thud, though it is more stingy overall. The cat is relatively lightweight and has a lot of sting with some cutting feel to it. The cat causes more pain with less effort from the domme because it is so light.

The second image on this page shows a high-contrast closeup of the tails of the two whips. This clearly shows what is meant by a flat braided flogger (which you can see is the typical three-strand braid most people think of when we say "braid") versus the tails of the cat, which are a very tight round braid ending in Turk's head knots on this particular cat (which provide a lot of the cutting feeling).

There is no good method of sterilizing leather whips. Any method that would truly sterilize them would ruin the leather. I do not use them on body parts that generally produce body fluids, preferring various types of rubber and plastic whips for genital flogging. These whips just draw screams, not blood, no matter how hard you whack a bottom. So I feel allowing them to hang for several days between uses is sufficient to prevent transmission of disease.

I have never cleaned them or applied leather conditioners; my entire care is to store them out of sunlight and always hanging. I keep my Heartwoods hanging at all times when not in use. I have a lot of hooks in my closet for home use. If I travel, I carry them in a garment bag so they remain hanging.

These beauties of craftsmanship are simply too exquisite and too expensive to screw up.

I <heart> my Heartwoods.