Hooking up

It is, of course, not enough to just install a TetherSpout inside one's penis to prevent pull-out.The spout needs to somehow be secured to the cage...

The first approach I have experimented with consists of securing the spout via a hook made of solid, if relatively thin, wire that is also securely attached to the cage when it is locked. An example of that was pictured at the end of the Introduction post in this blog.

I bent stainless steel wire (1/16" diameter, 316 grade) in the shape below, whereby:

• It slides over the cage's locking sleeve, behind the lock hole and thus cannot be removed once the padlock is in place
• It is shaped to follow the shape of the top of the cage, thus making it inconspicuous
• It passes over the top front bar of the cage, providing unyielding resistance to retraction
• Both ends of the wire hook into the tip of the spout by passing through the top cross hole, bending back out inside the spout, and ending pretty much flush with the spout tip
• The hook enters the spout hole at a shallow enough angle to allow a vinyl cap attached to the wire pair to slide over the spout, or slide back out to uncover it.

Here it is shown placed on the cage part of my Male Chastity Now "Contender" and hooked into a TetherSpout, but without any vinyl cap, for better visibility:

When locking up my precious bits, I typically put the testes ring (aka "base ring"), if any, in place first. I then install the TetherSpout as explained in my Installation post on this blog. At the end of that procedure, I temporarily keep the floss threaded through the spout tip, as it helps with the next step.
I present the cage in front of my penis and pass the floss through the rear of the cage and into the front opening where the spout is intended to come through. I then slide the cage on, without locking it yet. I pull lightly on the floss to orient the spout as desired and place the locking wire's hook into the top cross hole. Then, I rotate the hook into the spout so the wire pair comes to lie atop the cage, I pull it forward enough so the rear lines up in front of the locking sleeve and I slide it back over it. Padlocking the cage locks the wire in (at this point, I discard the floss).

I added a vinyl cap to the above system after my first experiments because:

• I had observed deferred leakage of a small amount of residual urine
• I was concerned about the possibility of impurities, such as lint, eventually finding their way up into my urethra
• The weather where I live can be very dry at times (below 10% relative humidity) and I though exposure to that wouldn't be good for the delicate urethra wall
• I like to go in the pool, sometimes while locked.

When purchased, the spouts come with one vinyl cap each. I drilled two tiny adjacent holes into the side of one cap, allowing the hook wires to squeeze through, and voila:

When I am ready to urinate, I slide the cap back off the spout and along the wire until it is out of the way. A bit of toilet paper is often handy to counteract the slipperiness of the vinyl. Once done with bodily functions, I slide the cap along the wires so it presents itself at an angle in front of  the spout. I press on the cap's tip, and it snaps back on.
There is a picture, a bit further down, that shows the cap in urination position...

The above-described locking wire is the latest version in a series of experiments with that approach. It is easier to install than its predecessors, but it has one potential drawback: it requires that the cage be secured with a padlock. If one's cage uses a security screw that has a low profile, this type of wire will not be properly held to the cage. The previous versions of locking wires that I had made (to fit a Mature Metal "Watchful Mistress") pass fully over the cage's locking sleeve and come to rest under the base ring's locking post. Thus, regardless of the cage's locking mechanism, the wire cannot be removed when the cage is locked.
Here are two such configurations:

The top one was my first prototype. It had a tendency to interfere with the padlock, so I made the bottom one with a wider shape in the place where it passes under the padlock. Although not really noticeable on the pictures, those wide sides are slightly curved downwards, to somewhat follow the shape of the cage's back ring and thus clear space for the padlock's body.
While we're at it, here's another picture of that wire that also shows it entering the side of the vinyl cap:

Here it is installed on the Watchful Mistress:

And here is another picture that shows the vinyl cap lifted up into urination position:

I stated earlier that this wire was not as easy to install as the one I showed first (on the "Contender"), and the reason for that may not be immediately obvious... The problem is that when it is swung into position, it requires applying a bit of force to make it pass over the locking sleeve, as it catches the top back of it. This can be mitigated by making the wire a bit longer, but doing so causes it to be fairly loose, as it can then slide back and forth quite a bit between the front of the base ring and the back of the cage. That isn't a problem with tight enough underwear but otherwise, it can look a bit sloppy.

To conclude this show-and-tell about my experiments with locking wires, here is a picture of my first prototype, made for a HolyTrainer v2:

This one was made of 14 gauge electrical copper wire. That wire is a bit thicker than 1/16" but two wire end would still pass side by side in the TetherSpout cross holes. I hadn't  thought about doing it that way at the time,and soldering the copper was easy enough (by comparison, welding thin steel wire without destroying it is still quite challenging for me), so the hook is made of a single wire end.
Here's what it looked like when locked onto the Holy Trainer:

Note that there isn't enough space at the tip of that cage to fit the vinyl cap.

I would actually recommend that anyone trying their hand at making locking wires use this kind of copper wire first. It is easy to come by (in the USA at least), reasonably sturdy yet much easier to bend, snip, and file than steel. That said, for long term use (stretches of more than a couple of days), you should definitely go with stainless steel.

A final note, about urine flow:
the ends of the locking wires located inside the spout do not cause as much of an obstruction as one would think, and the flow of urine is not impeded. However, some urine does get diverted through the bottom hole. It is not a violent jet (at least for me), but I wouldn't advise using a urinal with this setup.
I am working on a design that, among other virtues, solves that particular problem. But that will be the subject of another post...

En Français

Français:
Ceci est juste un article très court pour annoncer le blog « Chasteté masculine ancrée » dans lequel seront postées les traductions françaises des articles de Tethered Chastity.

English:
This is just a very short post to announce the blog "Chasteté masculine ancrée" which will carry french translations of the Tethered Chastity posts.

Size matters

When using a TetherSpout, getting the proper size retainer is essential.

The retainer must be small enough to be reasonably easy to install/remove, and it must be big enough to reliably anchor itself behind the inelastic ring of urethral tissue. If the retainer is too small, its rounded outer edge may be the only part that contacts the urethral wall. This would tend to push the surrounding tissue outward and possibly cause unintended stretching. The right size retainer, on the other hand, will have contact with the urethral wall on its flat part, so a pulling force on the spout will be resisted axially, without exerting undue radial forces.

To precisely figure out the size of your inner ring, you will have to probe it with a "urethral sound". Basically, this is a precisely sized rod that you insert into the tip of the penis to feel which size fits and which does not. "Sounding" is something that people also practice for the sheer feeling of it and not only for measuring purposes. To that effect, you can find sounding kits that feature multiple sound diameters, generally in steps of 1 millimeter. This is actually too coarse a stepping for our purposes here, because retainers are sized in units of 1/3 millimeters.

The unit used for retainers is called "French" (abbreviated "Fr"). It is used in the medical field for catheters and is convenient in that context because it also relates to the size of the incision needed to insert a catheter (you can read more about it in the Wikipedia article on the French catheter scale).

For measuring yourself, I recommend you order a "Sizing Sound/Dilator" from Tether Products. These are graduated directly in Fr units and are stepped smoothly along their length to make measurement easy and comfortable: you just insert the sound until you meet unyielding resistance. At that point, the last diameter inserted is your measurement.

Here are the two Sounds/dilators that are available from Tether Products. The metal part of each sound/dilator is about 6 1/2 inches long:

To figure out which sound/dilator is best for you, try this: measure the vertical length of your slit while flaccid and without stretching it (the outside is elastic, unlike the inelastic part further inside). If it is at least 14mm (0.55") in length, get the 26-36 sound. Otherwise, get the thinner 20-30 sound. The penny in the above picture is located next to the 26 Fr step on the thinner sound. That is the same diameter as the first step on the thicker sound.

This 26 Fr diameter is a significant one: it corresponds to the smallest retainer available. Note also that the spout flange itself will require 25.5 Fr to get in. If your size is 27 Fr or above, you may want to use a retainer that is one Fr unit smaller than your measurement, to make insertion/removal easier. If your measurement is less than 26 fr, you will need to stretch your opening (the smooth steps in the sound/dilator will help here too) before you can use a TetherSpout.

When you eventually purchase your retainer, you will actually have to order a set composed of a round retainer and two oval ones. Here are two oval ones:

Just use your imagination for the round one. I could not put it in the picture because it is... hmm... locked away.
Each of the retainers in such a set can pass through the same opening, since they all have the same width. Personally, I don't use the oval ones because I find them more complicated to remove (you have to line them up so that their width and not their length is what passes through your urethral opening and that's not trivial).

Regarding spout sizes:
All the spouts have the same diameter (it matches the size of the hole in all the retainers). When you buy spouts, you can opt to get a set of 4 different lengths, which is slightly cheaper than if you were to buy all 4 separately. My advice is to just get two of the longest (24mm) spouts. For chastity purposes, the shorter ones are not that useful. If you do buy a set of 4, you'll probably end up wearing only the longest one and you'll use the next-to-longest only to help insertions/removals.


Remember to sanitize your sound(s) and the tip of your penis thoroughly before insertion (e.g.with antibacterial soap). Especially as you'll probably push the sound in further than any spout. It is also a good idea to urinate after you are done to flush out any possible impurities.

PS: I'm not sorry for the possibly misleading title. I like double-entendre.  :-p