Tying — how a binding is actually made

Most guides tell you what a finished tie looks like. This is the part in between: what your hands do to get there. It is deliberately short on knots — you need exactly one — and long on the three or four things that decide whether a tie is safe.

What a binding actually is

Every instruction in this app that says "bind A to B" means one thing: the wraps go round A and B together, as one bundle, and the whole bundle is then fastened off. Two separate cuffs that never touch each other are not a binding — they are two bracelets.

Three numbers cover almost all of it. Wraps go round the pair three or four times, not once. Every wrap leaves two flat fingers of room between the material and the skin. The knot, buckle or clip finishes on the outside, where a free hand — theirs or yours — can find it in the dark.

The one move that separates a tie from a tangle is the cinch: once the wraps are on, pass the loose end between the two limbs, across the wraps, and pull it snug before you knot it. That is what stops the whole thing sliding tight around a wrist when somebody pulls against it. Rope needs it. Cuffs and buckles get the same effect from their hardware and do not.

Where material never goes: the mid-upper arm, because the radial nerve runs there and it is behind most bondage injuries; across the front of the throat; over a joint that is taking load; and anywhere it crosses itself under tension where you could not get shears in.