How comfortable is comfortable enough

My Bib Starter arrived yesterday. I practiced wrapping a few times last night and hung today for the first time. Here’s my question: How comfortable is comfortable enough? By the end of 20 minutes, the portion of my glans that is exposed above the wrap is reddish purple and a bit numb, but not completely numb and during the whole time there was no pain. For the first 20 minutes, I used 2.5 pounds. I am doing this seated with the force applied parallel to the ground (via weight suspended from a pulley). This seemed very light so I increased it to 5 pounds. This seemed adequate and the results, in terms of numbness and so forth, were no different. Temperature, color, and sensation returned to normal within a few minutes of taking the wrap off. Each time I re-wrap and re-seat in the hanger, I re-read Bib’s instructions or someone else’s in order to try to incorporate more of the existing wisdom, but the results—in terms of the way the whole thing looks and feels once weight is applied to it—do not seem substantially different. Soo.I can’t tell if I am doing it “wrong” because it isn’t preventatively uncomfortable but doesn’t seem ideal and there are too few videos and pictures and my experience is too meager for me to have a solid idea about what other people consider right and wrong. I want it to be as good as it ought to be, but I don’t want to frustrate myself trying to achieve something that isn’t achievable.

You should give yourself couple of weeks-month time just to test different settings and wraps. Try a little toe-out and be sure that the top teeth is almost meshed when the hanger is tight. Re-tighten after couple of mins.

Do not increase weight until you can hang it comfortable. When you get it right, you should not have any problems with 5lbs.

If you can’t get it comfortable, join bib’s forum and ask his advice. He helped me to learn to use the hanger when I was starting.

My guess is that you don’t have the hanger tight enough if you are getting head problems with 5lbs. Experiment. It will pay off in the long run.

It also takes while to your penis to get used to the pressure of the hanger but you should not have pressure on the head and not numbness either. If the hanger is not tight enough, it will slide a little and form a noose on the head. You might also have too much blood in front of the hanger.

You wrote “the portion of my glans that is exposed above the wrap”.

Your whole head should be showing when you are hanging. Sounds like that you wrap too close to head.

There is also “pictures” section in the bib forum. You need to register to see that. There are plenty of pics.

Bib and others say that tighter is better, but this evening I found that about ten years ago, some people thought that for any given weight, as loose as possible while the hanger still rides sufficiently far back was the best degree of tightness. This is more intuitive to me and also feels better (based on very limited experience). What changed the commonly accepted method?

That was 10 years ago.

If I don’t get the hanger tight enough, I get:

-Skin soreness where the hanger sits
-Blood flow won’t work properly because the hanger forms a noose
-Blue glans at the end of the set
-Sometimes numb glans at the end of the set
-Soreness on the attachment point, this really limits hanging and tighter hanger has been only thing to help on this.

Loose hanger just is not an option, at least for me.

Tightness is not really problem weights under 15-20 lbs, but once you get over that. You WANT the hanger tight. This is why you move up slowly and tighten it more everyday or every time you up the weight.

When the hanger is tight and adjusted properly, I have no problems hanging 30lbs. But if the hanger is adjusted wrong and not tight, 12-15lbs start to feel uncomfortable.

First you need to adjust the hanger properly and the product guide helps with that. Tightness won’t help if you don’t have the hanger on like it should. To me it sounds like all your problems are from bad adjusted hanger or hanger not tight enough.