#custom tangles

[cutiepieautistic]

Custom gifs that I made for other posts

Credit is greatly appreciated! Thank you! :)

[stimtoybox]

DIY Silicone Sealant Spiky Tangle

I’ve spent the last three weeks working on my own version of @gothtistic-stims‘s Spiky Tangle, using a cheap eBay Tangle Jr as a base. This version uses something more readily available to me in Australia: dollar shop silicone sealant, the kind used to patch window seals and the edging around sinks/baths/showers.

I used the 50 gram Duramax tube shown above the Tangle, and it didn’t quite finish the whole Tangle--there’s quite a few gaps. However, I had to wipe away part of the Tangle in the process, so if you don’t make mistakes, I’d say that a 50 gram tube is enough to finish a Tangle Jr.

I found the Duramax silicone for $3 AUD, while the 30 gram tube shown below is available between $1.20-$2 AUD, depending on store.

This cheap silicone sealant isn’t durable enough to make fine spikes: they just break and scrape right off under handling, even when fully cured. I scraped the Tangle clean and tried larger, chunkier spikes like those above--so it’s more knobbly than a Tangle Hairy--and this version lasts under normal handling. I can break off a piece if I deliberately scrape at it, but not under normal use. I do like how the chunkier spikes feel so very different from a Tangle Hairy, so I think this is an interesting possible variation on the Spiky Tangle.

It will not hold up if you want to pull at or pluck off the silicone bits. If you mean to do this and replace the silicone every so often, I suppose it has utility as a picking/plucking/pulling stim, but the effort of modifying the Tangle, to me, means that I can’t recommend it for this purpose.

In theory, this is a simple DIY: press the silicone out of the tube until it forms a thick blob, pull the nozzle away, start another blob, repeat. Wait until the silicone dries (it cures fully in twenty-four hours, but I found that it needed four to five hours to set enough for gentle handling), turn the Tangle over and repeat. Easy, right?

Words can’t express how difficult this mod was for me--pressing even larger, well-spaced-out spikes of silicone means pressing hard on a metal tube to control the silicone, and I can only manage a few rows (maybe one row over five pieces) at a time, once a day--for three weeks. I do not recommend this for stimmers with chronic hand pain or any disability that impacts strength or movement, and if you’re like me and do it anyway, please expect this mod to be a week or three in the making. This hurt my hands. This hurt my hands a lot.

I don’t recommend that even the most physically-abled of stimmers do this all at once. Please, take very frequent breaks and space this out over a few days at least. It’s one of the most physically-demanding DIYs I’ve ever done, and I’m genuinely concerned that doing this without appropriate rest breaks and spacing will cause RSI-type injuries.

This said, if you’ve been wanting a cheap DIY Spiky Tangle, I think there’s some potential in silicone sealant, and it has the advantage of being a readily available product in most dollar shops.

Image description under read more cut:

[image description: a knock-off Tangle Jr made from nine white, four pink, four blue and one yellow macaroni-shaped pieces, sitting on a red watermelon slice pillow with two tubes of silicone sealant sitting above and below the Tangle. The Tangle is covered with rows of chunky, spiky partially-translucent silicone blobs, making another, rougher kind of DIY Spiky Tangle. The topmost tube of silicone is aqua and black by brand Duramax; the bottommost tube of silicone is blue and white, text reading simply “silicona / silicone / silikon”.]

[stimtoybox]

[image description: a single-colour light green Tangle Jr covered with rows of chunky, spiky partially-translucent /milky-clear silicone blob spikes, making a blobby sort of DIY Spiky Tangle. The Tangle has two black Zuru Tangle logos visible underneath the spikes of silicone and sits on a red watermelon slice pillow.]

DIY Silicone Sealant Spiky Tangle - Update

I thought folks might want to see how this treatment looks on a real Tangle (or a Zuru Tangle because they’re cheaper and easier for me to get). I had more silicone with almost a whole tube to use, so I was able to get the spikes tighter and closer together, although there’s still a few gaps. In person, these are less noticeable than they are on camera.

I also want to say that not all silicones are made equal in terms of smell: I went back to using the Duramax silicone because it has no odour. The cheap no-brand silicone had an awful chemical smell and I had to throw it out, even though it dried harder than the Duramax one. It might take some trial to find the right kind of silicone for you.

There’s a couple of pieces where the spikes are really rough because I was having trouble getting the silicone out of the tube: a chunk had dried up inside the nozzle, making it hard to squeeze evenly. I kept having to use a toothpick to clean out the end of the nozzle, but this didn’t work that well all the time. If doing this, I’d recommend leaving the silicone to sit open no longer than a day or so, because any longer results in a plug building up inside the nozzle. Just do a little bit every day and be consistent about doing this until the Tangle is done.

I’m really glad I did this on a non-knock-off Tangle, because this one is much nicer to use than the first in terms of rotation and feel in the hand. It’s so nice to stim with that it’s now in my main stim kit! I don’t think I’d want to do this to a Tangle Creations Tangle because of the expense and difficulty for me in tracking them down, but a Zuru Tangle makes a pretty good base.

I also really like the effect of the clear-ish silicone over a single-coloured base. It made it more difficult to see the joins between pieces when applying the silicone (I placed a couple over the joins by accident, which broke off when I first used the Tangle) but it looks so nice that I’d absolutely do this again--particularly if you’re wanting something that looks a little more adult than the Tangle Hairy.

(Side note: this is not a rare or hard-to-find Tangle, I promise. It’s three lots of pieces from three green/yellow/translucent orange Classics, so I’ve now got a solid yellow Tangle and a translucent orange Tangle as well, made from the other pieces. I love the green colour, but as I cannot remove the Zuru logos like I can the Tangle Creations logos, I thought I’d cover the three of them up with the silicone spikes.)