I need some advice and good ideas on fiberglass casting.

[Bondagelover]

Recently I have met a Mistress who share my interest in tight bondage and mummification. And I have already spent many hours, tightly wrapped in pallet wrap on her bondage bench. Last time I visited her, we decided we wanted to try using fiberglass casting next time. So I would like to here from You who have some experience in body casting with fiberglass. How do we get started? Is there some beginner mistakes we can avoid? Can we do a full body wrap right away, or do we have to start with smaller cast? I am really  looking forward to be put in a cast, and would really love to try a long lasting full body cast. Have any of You tried a full body cast, and for how long were You in the cast? I really hope to here from You. 

[Tom]

Go carefully. My first, last and every intermediate concern is safety, I cannot urge you this enough. It's why Gromet emphasises that these stories are just stories and nothing more, they're not something to try out in reality. However, if you chose to know differently, on your own head be it. The following thoughts are simply that, thoughts.
Some glassfibre resins create serious heat, so try them on something inanimate first.
Equally, you should consider whether a complete mummification might not pose a serious health risk at a number of levels, which are summarised in the thought that any scenario you are in should allow quick release if something unexpected goes wrong - this is a safety 101 in all forms of play. Play should be exactly that, play and pleasure, and if ever you go somewhere where that is at risk - which is itself sometimes a form of play, after all we see rock climbers and skydivers doing all kinds of daft things for exactly the same edge - then you should consider a quick-release setup. This is why having bandage shears to hand before you start is an essential, the headache is they don't work so well on casts. You may have a reciprocating cast saw to hand, however what happens if you have to apply CPR to someone when their torso's so coated you can't get at them? This is why medics don't go there. The legal ramifications are horrendous too, does the Dom really want to risk Homicide 3 Manslaughter charges, 20 years sharing a cell with Albert the Hulk if somethng goes seriously pear-shaped? They'll be a damned sight less dominant after that, I assure you.
That being said, this form of encasement almost goes too far. What you might consider is whether it might not perhaps be wiser to modularise the cast so that a body moulding comes in two parts, front and back, with locating pins and flanges to take some kind of lock or tie - a plastic one, for example, will hold it completely closed yet allow very rapid release, four quick snips. Similarly for the limbs. The greatest risk there is if something gets pinched putting it on! Design the seams so they slide past each other male half on one side, female on the other. And for the effect, the dom makes it seem the entire suit is to be sealed. The advantage is that you're not stick for hours while the resin sets off - OK, there are quick-set resins, however...
What I'm pointing you towards is a kind of personally-fitted suit of armour made of glass or carbon fibre rather than steel. The Mummy Walks. There are plenty of sites describing that process. If the mummy shouldn't walk, then use mould release gel at the seams between the parts so you can create the suit stepwise, starting from the cuirass before moving on to the pauldrons and arm greaves, using dowels to keep the holes in the flanges located, and similarly down the legs and up to the helm. Instead of leaving gaps as a suit of armour does, take the solid right up to the line of the skin fold at the joint - look at your elbow inner joint to see what I mean, there's a clear line showing where the upper and lower arm meet, that's where each part of the cast goes to. By butting up the pieces like this, you create an utterly rigid armature in controlled stages. A similar concept applies to the head, do the front first, preferably while wearing a latex hood coated in release lube or vaseline: sometimes it's a three-stage process, making a female mould of the real head in something like papier-mache. so nostril tubes allow the patient to remain breathing, then fill that with expanded foam as a male cast (don't forget the release agent, vaseline is your friend), then cover that with more papier-mache to give strength and a slight airspace stand-off to allow the air to get out when the final outer cast is made as a female on that. You don't want that helmet to create a vacuum fit to the skin, the latex and papier mache make a head space just a tad larger than the sub's real head! Similarly, for a female mummy (well, aren't they all?), the question of what to do with all that hair may be relevant. JG Leathers' site shows exactly how he did just such a helmet using a form of expanding metal mesh, Formetal Ysilon - he couldn't hammer it to shape onto his model's head, so he moulded a duplicate head as I describe and fitted it to that.
Just be careful not to breathe in resin dust, when using a cast saw or files, it's potentially a serious health hazard - this is why they sell facemasks for those working in it. You could use latex gasmasks fitted with breathing canisters for both parties - and if you wanted to really load the sub, rebreathing the dom's waste air is just about feasible, we're fairly inefficient in what we breathe out, there's lots of oxygen left, however it is a really stuffy experience much like using a rebreather bag! It might even be wise to put such a bag in as a reservoir halfway down the pipe so the sub and dom are able to breathe at their own rates. Try it as a separate learning experience first.
Similarly, while rigging locking flanges, you might also consider freestanding flanges around the body periphery as you look at it from the front, to secure separate bondage to. They say that suspending such a cast from a surrounding frame using bungy elastics is close to weightlessness.
And finally, this is entirely at your own risk. My first, last and every intermediate concern is safety, I cannot urge you this enough. It's why Gromet emphasises that these stories are stories and not something to try out in reality.

[Mikel]

I agree with caution first but using fiberglass casting supplies easily purchased on line the heat is minimal but I would recommend a cutter, I use a vibrating saw with a grout cutter on it works much better than shears, I have used both. The padding they sell with the wrap really works well and helps deflect heat from setting, and cutting. I have used nothing but plastic wrap under cast before no problem and fits much tighter. It does become claustrophobic and there is no quick release but it feels incredible start small arm, leg then both then all four before moving to full body gives you experience getting in and out, hope you have fun would love to hear about your trials.
Mikel

[njemt11]

It is very easy to use fiberglass casting tape. I am an avid caster and have done a lot of
Casts over the years.  Like others have said start with one and try it out for a day or two. It is the best form of public bondage. Padding is key. If not padding it can rub your skin raw and it is not good to get the resin on your skin at all.
Shoot me a IM if you want to know more.  Big fan of casting and braces.

[Bondagelover]

Thank you very much for your reply, and thank you for your concern about safety. I have been doing bondage for 15 years and selfbondage even longer. So I know that safety is very very important, especially when doing something as extreme as a full body cast.
Tom I realy like your idea about making the cast in two parts, that way you can make a quick release, and you can make the cast re-useable.

We have been doing some test runs. I have been in double longleg cast for 12 hours and a hip Spica also for 12 hours both fiberglass. We have also made an almost full body cast, using plaster of paris. It took about 4 hour to put on, and then i was cut free about 6 hours later. That was a very interesting experience, and we are definitely going to try it again. and hopefuly using fiberglass.

[Tom]

In such matters, being trained as a paramedic, one plays safe, if not for you, then for other readers, as at the end of the day, or rather days, suicide - even if accidental - is legal in my country, if unadvisable. However it can have unhappy consequences for anyone else aware of your proposed actions, such as the other readers here, if they do not take appropriate action to preempt matters reaching such a pass. I know because I was on the edge of an assisted misericordia case - fortunately the sufferer died naturally before we had to test legislative dominion, which would have been interesting, with my lawyer's hat on, as the Coroner's Officer is a family member fully aware of the situation. Lawyers can be masochists as well as sadists, you know!
That being said, if you choose to disregard that advice, then the easiest way for you to go from the one-piece casting to the reusable is to do that release cut carefully so you can add the appropriate flanges afterwards, as a last stage in turning the single-use into a reusable cast.
Considering that my suspicion was that you are rather new to predicament play was correct, I would encourage you to try the release route, though. JG Leathers' Creature schema uses this extensively, although he's not walking the hard cast route so much.
Other considerations are preemptive use of antibiotics against infections from wear and tear of flesh from the cast and its removal, and plumbing as you're already looking at longer-term encasement. Vitamins can also be important in prophylaxis, and in longer-term scenarios, embedded electrodes to maintain muscle stimulation. Having worn a cast for six weeks after an unusual break, the mummy skin at the end is something else, as you don't shed dead skin in the way you normally do. That again can be a health problem.

[Tom]

The more I think about the general gist of the thread, the more concerned I become, that just because things have gone well in the past, you presume they will go well again in the future: that reveals a dangerous lack of standards. The past is no guide whatsoever to catastrophic crisis, you fail to realise that whatever causes a crisis is unpredictable, by its very nature, and you must allow spare capacity to get out of it when and if it ever does: what you are doing does not make such a provision, you are not working safely, this is not about legislative lipservice, it is about reality. What you are doing using inescapable bondage is sooner or later going to dig a hole for someone six feet deep, eight feet long and a couple of feet wide surrounded by weeping family, lawyers and police. That is something nobody would wish on you or anyone else, however is a hard reality whatever we wish.
I must therefore call upon you to cease this trend towards a full-body inescapable bondage. What you say and what you are doing are two very different things, and although I cannot stop you, I cannot by exactly the same standards stay silent and thereby implicitly complicit in this dangerous behaviour. Full coverage of a limb is unlikely to be life-threatening, doing the same to a torso can be: what I an calling for is a close proximity to full coverage, enough to maintain the illusion and mental impression that it is, but with the reality that the mentor supervising the bondage can intervene rapidly to remove it. That's not optional, if you fail to respect this you may immediately be placing yourself in a criminal position of some degree, starting with various degrees of common assault and rapidly escalating to attempted murder. Im sorry about coming on heavy, however just as you'd use the argument that tbis is play, so I'd use exactly the same argument to say play safely, kids. What you're doing as tyros isn't safe: the furthest your argument might go to is to argue over definitions of safety, which is why I'm speaking out: you should be able to return your sub to what passes for normality within seconds, as an absolute rule. It is not normal to have to spend large chunks of the Golden Hour removing hardware to allow a paramedic to get to the heart of the problem, and anyone causing such an impedence is likely to be on the wrong end of the paramedic's report to the cops, regardless of the outcome: we do make reports so whatever went wrong gets corrected as far as possible, and if that correction means a long and unfriendly interview in a cell, then that is what it may mean, sorry.

[Mikel]

Bondagelover nothing about bondage, mummification bondage,self bondage, asphyxiation-breath control bondage is totally safe. Something can happen at any time anywhere doing anything, unforeseen events are just that and all you can do is ease in to it and learn as much as you can, which it sounds like you are, make sure your body doesn't have any adverse reactions to the materials and you don't have any hidden claustrophobic or entrapment concerns that might trigger a reaction. It sounds like we have had similar experiences except most of mine have been solo and yours is advancing along what appears to be at a careful pace and direction. I am not encouraging you but as most of us here understand the "chances" we are taking all we can do is be as careful as possible. As to the point of "you should be able to return your sub to what passes for normality within seconds" I have been around a lot of enthusiasts and the discussion before the event, with familiar partners, sets the expectations for release and only carefully becoming familiar with partner can lead to that high point for you or them of getting the feeling of true helplessness and borderline panic that most crave. What it boils down to if it was totally safe we would not be interested because it wouldn't be any fun. I recently casted both my arms in long arm casts purposely without practicing my release just to increase the feelings of desperation and excitement of the unknown, no it wasn't potentially life threatening but I would have had to go outside to seek help if I hadn't been able to free myself. Send me an e-mail I would be interested to hear about your up coming adventures. I will say unless you really like tight confinement don't cast too tight around torso, chest or throat it doesn't flex and got very uncomfortable for me relativity quickly ruining the experience.  Be careful and have fun Mikel