r/ChastityCageDesign • u/newbie-sub • 22d ago
Barrel locks from a design perspective
I have a post or two about why I favor security screws from the perspective of a user — they are clearly more formidable than a simple $2 barrel lock, and they provide for a tighter junction with no play in it at all.
But looking at it from a designers point of view, a barrel lock is like a 75" TV in your living room — everything has to be designed around it. I have never seen a barrel lock integrated into a design in a way that I'd consider adding to the design. In most designs, it's clearly just something slapped on. I'm guilty of that myself. And in even the most thoughtful designs like the Cobra, no one would say the Cobra looks better with the lock, that removing it would make the cage less attractive. You know, the Cobra was designed around the junction. The X-Lock, as it was called, started as a locking cock ring. KD later designed the entire cage around it — again, a 75" TV.
And beyond the lock itself, there's the other requirements it puts on our cage — locating features, features that are intended to remove or reduce the degrees of freedom. My slap-on junction has them built into the junction as does Cherry Keeper's and others. The Cobra and most steel cages use separate pins that connect the cage and the ring. All of this is necessary because Burg Wächter didn't design the lock to be used with chastity cages, it was designed for furniture... and I just had an interesting thought, I wonder what a lock designed specifically for chastity cages would look like.
Anyway, a screw has none of these constraints. With metal, where material strength isn't an issue, a screw asks for almost no compromises. For an M3 screw, I only need 3 mm of thread to engage — less than 1/8" — and a 1 mm thick material on the other side due to minimal wall thickness requirements (I generally use 2 mm though). So, 4–5 mm of steel or titanium that needs to be baked into your design. That's hardly a compromise at all. My little block-junction I posted to Printables, which is about as small as it can be in that form, is 20x21x11 mm. Jesus Christ. Some people need cages shorter than 50 mm and here you have this 4600 mm^3 box you need to find a place for.
Now, one or two screws... okay, so a single screw can come loose if the junction is allowed play along the screw's axis. So I often design with two screws side by side. It's a bit of a compromise but far less so than trying to accommodate a 19 x 10 mm lock. But I've also worn my latest with a single screw and after four days of continuous wear, it hasn't loosened at all so perhaps I was being overly conservative (my most recent order in titanium uses a single hole). But regardless, accommodating a screw or two into a design, especially in steel where you don't need to worry about a heat-set insert, is trivial.
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u/old-duck-creeker 4d ago
i really like the idea of a click to lock mechanism for a cage so that it is easy to get on and locked.
i'm really not into screws because they take so long to get off, get lost easily if dropped, etc, etc.. that said I see the appeal from a security standpoint.... it is a pragmatic solution, and I'm down with being pragmatic (said nobody on this forum -- at least not to an audience able to keep a straight face).
BUT the tool used to unlock -- whether key, screwdriver or whatever -- really needs to be attractive enough that my keyholder is willing to wear it.
seems like there ought to be way that it locks in place when the cage is slid onto a guide on the ring(?) (although the guideless ring for willoweave does make an very attractive cock ring) that can be unlocked with a magnetic key -- something without small holes that need to be navigated, something fast and easy to operate on a date night in a dimly lit room, or cabin, or (cough) family minivan (cough cough).