Hi there Lucy, I just wanted to know something! How can you tell plastic boning from steel? Is there visible difference? (if you could provide side-to-side photos that would be great) and lastly, I just needed to say that I love you and your blog / vlog. It should be illegal to be that graceful wow<3
Hello! Thanks so much for your compliments. :)
One important thing to note is that most OTR corset companies will not invest in the good quality synthetic whalebone - so in corsets I’ve tried which contained plastic boning, the bones were pretty poor quality. The corsets felt unusually lightweight (in direct comparison to the number of bones and layers; light corsets are not always a measure of quality) and I also noticed that the bones were atypically flexible, even compared to spiral bones.
But the biggest way to check is to get a decent magnet (I use a wand made for picking up pins, but I’ve heard others use a Curiously Strong Magnet) and check the bones for iron content. If there’s no pull, it’s a good chance that it’s plastic (as carbon fibre bones are SUPER stiff and as far as I know is not used in any OTR corsets).
I have a video on different types of corset bones here, if you’re interested. :)
