Blog (informational articles)
How to make a sex toy: what is actually safe to improvise, and what is not
People search for this for two reasons: money, and not wanting to order anything. Both have better answers than a homemade toy, and the reason is specific rather than squeamish.
This page gives no instructions and no recipes. That is a deliberate choice rather than coyness, and it is worth explaining, because a page that simply said do not would be useless to anyone already planning to.
Emergency departments remove improvised objects from people regularly. The pattern is consistent and it is not about embarrassment: it is about three specific physical facts that homemade toys get wrong, and that a manufactured toy of any price gets right. Once you know what those three facts are, you can judge any idea yourself, which is more useful than a list of banned objects.
The three things that cause the injuries
- No flange, so it is lost. The anus draws things inward and closes behind them; the vagina grips a smooth object and gives nothing to hold. Every manufactured insertable toy has a flared base, a loop or a handle for this one reason. An improvised object almost never does, and retrieval under anaesthetic is the common outcome rather than the rare one.
- A porous or reactive surface. Food, wood, unsealed plastic, improvised fabric and anything with a coating all hold bacteria in a way a non-porous surface does not, against mucous membrane that absorbs readily. Vegetables and fruit are the most commonly suggested and among the worst: an unwashable surface, often with pesticide residue, pressed against the most absorbent tissue in the body.
- It can break inside. Glass that is not borosilicate, rigid plastic, anything hollow, anything with a seam, anything frozen. A toy breaking in place is the injury category with the worst outcomes, because the fragments do the damage on the way out.
What is genuinely fine to improvise
- Your hands, and a partner's. No material question, no retrieval question, and the only hygiene rule is clean hands and short nails.
- A shower head on a flexible hose, used externally. Water pressure on the outside of the body carries no retrieval or material risk. Never direct a pressurized stream into the vagina or the urethra, which is the one way this goes wrong.
- A pillow, a cushion or a folded towel for position and pressure. Entirely external, washable, and the thing a manufactured positioning cushion is a tidier version of.
- A condom over something as a barrier is not a fix. This is the common idea and it does not work: a condom does not stop an object being lost, does not stop it breaking, and tears on anything with an edge or a seam. If the object underneath was unsafe, it still is.
The cheaper legitimate route, in four steps
Decide whether the obstacle is money or privacy
They have different answers. If it is money, the entry level in this category is genuinely cheap now and there is a page of it on this site. If it is privacy, that is a delivery and billing problem, which is solvable and covered on the discreet shipping page.
Buy external before internal
A small external vibrator is the cheapest category and has no retrieval or breakage question at all. It is also what most people wanted in the first place.
Insist on three words in the listing
One piece, non-porous, and a named material: platinum or medical silicone, borosilicate glass, or stainless steel. Those three words are what separate the cheapest acceptable toy from the cheapest toy.
If it goes inside, check for the flange with your own hand
Flared base, loop, ring or handle, and you can hook it with one finger. This is the single rule that the whole homemade category fails, and it costs nothing to check.
Questions people ask
- Is it safe to use a vegetable or a piece of fruit?
- No, and it is the most common suggestion. The surface cannot be cleaned, often carries residue, and there is nothing to hold. Washing it and covering it with a condom addresses neither the retrieval problem nor the breakage problem.
- Does putting a condom on it make an object safe?
- No. A condom is a barrier against fluids, not a solution to an object being lost, breaking, or having an edge. It also tears readily on seams and corners.
- What about a shower head?
- Used externally it is one of the few genuinely safe improvisations. Do not direct pressurized water into the vagina or urethra, and never use a hose attachment to force water internally.
- Something is stuck. What should I do?
- Go to an emergency department rather than using any implement to retrieve it. It is a routine procedure there, it is quicker the sooner you go, and attempts at home are what turn a removal into an injury.