Claw Creation Story
Hello Sensation Seeker!
I'm jHats, the maker behind these products for intentional touch and cosplay. I live and work from a beautiful place in the Dandenong Ranges, looking out at birds, bush and kangaroos. I recognise the people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional custodians of this land. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.
Everything you see here exists as a result of me fulfilling my desire to make the things I would like to have in my world, combined with a wish to share the joy that these sensational toys bring me.
The Claws originally came about as a costume prop for a party where I had an enormous amount of fun playing with them and was asked many times if I would make some for other guests.
The first set of claws was just a prelude though, the first prototype. They suffered many of the shortcomings that I see in most similar products on the market that I now know exists. Before I could share them I had to feel they were right, not just thrown together. I tweaked and refined the design tens of times to reach that point, painstakingly testing each iteration. The outcome of all of that was the first production Claws — printed in ABS on my own machine, and the foundation everything since has been built on.
In the early days I printed every set myself, in my workshop, on an Up300 running ABS filament — each one finished by hand, packed and shipped by me. Those first Claws travelled the world and taught me an enormous amount. Chiefly, that I could do better. These days my own printer only earns its keep on development work — prototypes, test fits, ideas that arrive at odd hours — and every Claw we sell is commercially printed on industrial machines. When people hear "3D printed" they sometimes picture what a home printer turns out. We went there. It was part of the learning curve, and we've moved well past it. One of my greatest joys doing this is the amount of feedback I get about how much others enjoy these products. Meanwhile, I'm always asking myself — How can I do this better? Three obvious things came up early on...
First. The surface finish from my own printer was good, but not perfect - you could see the layers on close inspection. I engaged a commercial 3D printing specialist in Melbourne, someone I know and trust, to print Claws in Nylon using SLS. The surface is more uniform, and the process is capable of far finer detail. That was the beginning of the end for home printing, and the start of something better...
but not yet....
Second. Thumbs were never part of the original concept, but repeated requests encouraged me to continue experimenting to get the shape to a good general fit. Thumbs are more variable than fingers it seems! Having developed a suitable form, thumbs were added at the same time as some other file adjustments for the new printer. Thumbs are still one of the most frustrating elements of our product. The relative size has been slightly adjusted to bring them closer to the center of an apparent bell curve of human presentations. They still are an imperfect fit for many but not in any consistent way that we can address. The frustration is that most people report rarely using the thumbs for play anyway!
While adjusting files I was also able to add a couple of variations (Steampunk and Armour) that were too finely detailed for my own printer to have done well. That's the start of the Premium Nylon Collection.
Third. I wanted these to work for electro play. This meant printing in metal. Our Metal Claws are now proudly printed in Melbourne at a facility that specialises in medical implants. They are of the highest possible quality. Polishing takes place with a different Melbourne company - polishing is all that they do, and they excel at it.
After sharing my BDSM Claws with thousands of people all over the world, I have received a lot of feedback. It has been overwhelmingly positive. I also received requests for variations. I tried to assemble the requests for variations into a single product when they were compatible. It took many months to get through a lengthy prototyping and testing phase, hampered by lockdown and occasional isolations.
The Kitten Claws were born from this process. They are very specifically designed for intentional touch and sensation play. This latest design variation took into account the following criteria:
- They are shorter than any of the other Claws, enabling a higher degree of precision and negating the tendency some people found of the Claws wanting to lean sideways under high pressure. Not everyone experiences this, and it comes at the expense of the more spectacular appearance of the other designs. This makes them perfect for high intensity scratching of bare skin in kink play.
- They are sharper than any other Claw in the range. It won't happen by accident, nor is it difficult to break skin with the Kitten Claws.
- I moved away from the flat base (when printed upright) that was a legacy of the early FDM printing.
- Material volume has been kept to an aesthetically pleasing minimum to produce a lower cost product.
The Kitten Claws weren't the end of it. Our most recent style is the Skull Claws, and since then the workshop energy has gone into materials - exploring what else these designs can become, and how far each material can be pushed. Crystal Claws are an example of this, transferring the existing designs to different material to achieve a different look and feel.
The ideas keep coming too. Some of the best have arrived from our community - excited, enthusiastic people; our people — and there are at least a dozen claw designs in development as I write this. Whether any of them make it to market, we shall have to wait and see. It's never dull here.
All of these Claws have brought an enormous amount of joy, to me, my friends, their friends, and thousands of people all over the world. I hope you choose to join in the fun :-)
jHats
Sensation Dealer