Branding (31)

In the end it is to an extent about control. Branding I find, is an unpredictable activity with varying results depending on a lot of factors such as

1) Wether the sub moves (I know it sounds cliché but it really is something to consider as a factor)

2) Keloid formation or how likely someone is to scar. I've had all sorts of branding experiences from people who've healed so completely there was hardly a mark from the branding left after 6 months to people who are still scarred from what was supposed to be a temporary brand...

3) Site of the brand. Whether it's something that might be seen in a swimming costume/medical check up and if that's going to cause problems or not...

Aftercare would be like any sort of wound or burn. Keep site clean and watch for infection.

Stainless Steel cookie cutters in alphabet shapes actually make pretty good brands. You don't need to have the metal red hot to cause a brand. Afterall think of the number of times you might have burned yourself on a hot dish etc...

Practice can be done on turkey thighs

-- A Kervert Pinky

A Cautery pen is the way to go. Too many variables with a soldering iron. I'd personally do the practice on a pork joint though, and that sorts out Sunday lunch.

Downside is that it won't have the ritual feeling of a hot iron strike brand. So spend some time thinking about that aspect. After all it should be a special occasion.

Owner of The Croppery Dungeon and Breakfast. Organises The St Leonards munch Promotes The Club with no name

But on the side of caution. I'd think about it. i wanted to get branded but I have seen a lot of branding a few months to a year after and a lot of the time if the scar is still there I could not make out what it was. which put me off doing it. if you find where to get the pen can you let me know it sounds fun.

I did a lot of research on this recently for someone who was interested. The most common way to do it is using a very small segmental tool which makes a small brand at each application, and to work around the pattern of the brand one step at a time - much like a sort of tattooing. That seems to me to lack the essential theatre of branding, and I would be much more interested in single strike - where the whole pattern is applied in one go.

Single strike is certainly hard to get right, and opportunities to practice are limited. Practising on leather will not work because it reacts quite differently from living skin. Practising on living animals is obviously cruel. It seems to me that the best opportunity to practice would be on recently dead animals, for example road-kill rabbits (which have skin of similar thickness to human).

My notes for what it's worth are as follows:

Notes on branding

Branding is a form of body modification with strong cultural associations to ownership and to slavery. It is said to be extremely painful. There is some degree of risk associated; and, at least potentially, there is a satisfying drama and theatre about a brand which (at least in the popular imagination) is a sudden and intense experience different from the slower and more painstaking practice of tattooing.

Strike brand

Strike branding is the process of branding by striking the skin briefly with a hot implement. It is the satisfyingly dramatic form of branding. Let's start by observing that a lot of what is said in body modification circles about strike branding - even by people with direct experience - seems to a mixture of folklore and bullshit. I suspect the first people who in modern times used branding in the body mod community learned from experience and passed their experience on without a great deal of theory or understanding of the physical processes. So I'm probably going to have to do some experimentation.

In branding, you have pretty much one chance to get it right. Some sites I have read talk of the possibility of reworking a brand after it has completely healed (months), but it seems likely that this would just produce a scarred mess. If the heat exposure in branding is not sufficient, only a first degree burn will result - painful, but no permanent scarring (so very anti-climactic). If the exposure is not even, the resulting scar will not be even.

Single strike 'does not work'

According to the BDSM and body-modification websites, strike branding a complete design with a shaped iron in a single strike 'does not work'. See for example here. The common solution is to build up the brand as a series of strikes each making a short length of line. That's disappointing because it takes away from the drama and theatre of branding, and I confess to wondering whether it can be true. There are extant historical branding irons designed to be used on humans which applied an entire design in a single strike - one is in Lancaster court house, which I could probably examine. However, without a series of experiments it's going to be hard to find out, and finding enough skin area on which to perform a series of experiments is going to be hard.

My suspicion is that if one built up the pattern in a single iron in such a way that the thermal mass per linear millimetre of each part was equal, and the iron was pre-shaped to the natural curvature of the skin at the intended site, and the iron was heated evenly, it probably would work (given appropriate design). Obviously thermal expansion gaps in the design would be important.

Fine design 'does not work'

This sounds less like bullshit. As the brand scars and heals, the scar line is at least three times the width of the wound (this seems more or less right when using my own accidental and surgical scars as comparison). The line is 'about the width of a felt marker pen', but lines close together are likely to blur into one another during the healing process.

Material

Thin stainless steel sheet is the commonly recommended material for branding. It's probable that stainless doesn't really make a difference - the brand must be hot enough to cauterise, so there can be no transfer of bacteria or other organic contaminant from the tool to the wound. Still, it cannot do harm to use stainless. Both silver and bronze have apparently been used historically. According to Wikipedia, branding with implements made of silver and gold forms part of a religious initiation in one Hindu sect.

Heat exposure parameters

Temperature

This is where the most bullshit is talked. The person who calls himself 'Fakir' claims to heat his implement to 'about 2400 degrees Fahrenheit' and 'cherry orange-red'. 'Subversive Submissive' (who is quoting from Fakir, who branded her) claims 2500 degrees. 2400 Farhenheit is 1300 celsius - porcelain firing temperature, and the colour temperature at 1300 celsius is intense yellow-white. Steel starts to melt at 1300 celsius; you could not use a branding iron that hot because it would be soft as toffee.

Furthermore other sources talk about branding irons for use on humans made of bronze (melting point 850-1000 C depending on composition) or silver (melting point 961 C). I suspect that Fakir is right about the colour and exaggerating wildly about the the figure - implying cherry red which is probably around 800 celsius; while the reference to silver branding irons implies (if they are true, and not just fiction) that lower temperatures can be effective.

An alternative to heat branding is cold branding, where the iron is cooled to a very low temperature using dry ice. In cold branding, brass can be used as a material (although stainless would still work). Accounts of freeze branding describe irons with considerable thermal mass, and application times of one minute.

Contact period

'Strike' branding implies less than a second contact. No site I have yet found gives more precise guidance on exposure time.

Thermal mass

The greater the thermal mass of the implement, the more evenly (and slower) it will heat and cool, but equally the more potential injury can be done if the exposure is too long.

Injury risk

Second and even third burns, over a very small proportion of total body area, do not cause significant healing problems. However, brand scars can be slow to heal and can give rise to prolonged itching (just like any injury scar, in fact. 'Subversive submissive', in her 'three months later' piece, reports continued itching and discomfort. However, her discomfort is associated with kelloid, which is related to skin melanin. A fair skinned, freckled victim is unlikely to kelloid (the person I was hoping to brand is fair skinned and freckled).

Healing time is varied. Some sources quote as little as three weeks, some as much as a year.

Obviously if heat is applied for too long it may burn through the skin completely into subcutaneous tissue. This would not be good.

Alternatives to strike branding

Branding may be carried out in a much more controlled way using a cauterising pencil. These can be bought and while the complete kit is expensive it is not prohibitively so. Essentially, the user just draws on the skin with an implement which applies a controlled amount of heat. However, this method lacks the drama of the strike brand and I see no particular advantage over tattooing.

Links

http://www3.sympatico.ca/unishred/pages/brand.htm

This page has an intensely erotic picture showing what it claims is a pubic brand. However, it isn't a brand, since brands don't look like that - where a branding scar is broad and generally paler than the surrounding skin, this is fine and darker. It is either make-up or a tattoo. The idea is nice, though.

http://angilicbrat.tripod.com/id24.html

Gorean stuff. Whether there is any experiential backing for this is hard to say.

http://www.bmezine.com/scar/A01215/scrmymon.html

A detailed account of freeze branding which sounds like real experience.

;; Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat.
Some of my stories are here. Others are here.

'Taste the whip, in love, not given lightly......taste the whip, now plead for Me !'

"Hit me" said the masochist. "No" said the sadist.

An excellent and comprehensive post!

I'd just add to what has gone before, the results from branding can be wildly different from what was intended, and many amateur brands are so deformed and unsightly they bear no resemblance to anything that can be easily deciphered.

So I'd say it is not something you should try without a lot of help from someone who has experience and can show you a good finished result. Simply judging the temperature is critical, and its very very hard to guess. The design and thickness and spacing of the tool is also critical, and not something you can go back to and correct afterwards.

The Story of O of course sounds great, it is meant to, but it is just a story. Large thick branding irons might work on cattle, but on thin human flesh the result would be wildly different.

'To Oblivion, and beyond!'