Of interest to a few

[mrrymen2]

Here is the photo I said I would post of the old Tom Hill stockwhip.
Considering Tom stopped making whips about 1975, this makes it at least thirty years old. There are a few typical traits on Tom's twelve plait handles, one is the five part four bight doubled turks head and the short piece of double diamond plaiting about the middle. The keeper is not typical and I would say it has been replaced at some time. Like many whipmakers of the time Tom ran a plaiting factory, that is he employed plaiters or "apprentices" to do the actual plaiting while he cut out the sets and generally oversaw the quality of the work. The last two apprentices he had were his son Jim Hill and Terry Jacka (whose wife by the way supplied these photos to me). From what I understand Tom would have plaited no more than five whips in a hundred and I suspect that would be a generous estimate. On a lighter note I wonder who actually plaited the bullwhip pictured in Dave Morgan's book that Dave says he used as a guide to his Indy whips. If anyone is keen on who really did the work on a particular whip it would pay to ask just to make sure, especially buying from Australia.

The whip below is in obvious need of a new fall which I think is the toughest job on an old whip not only because the leather dries out and loses it's strength but over time it acquires a "set" that is it tends to stay in its original position as it loses and absorbes moisture and it doesn't like being forced into a new position, even with liberal amounts of plaiting soap.
However I am told this repair was a success so this saga had a happy ending.
You may notice the handle has a bend. This would be a cane handle and the bend is one of the problems that occur with these and are usually left alone in case of more damage in trying to repair the fault. I remember Terry telling me he switched to fibreglass handles because of the troubles with tapered cane damage.

There is a photo of a later whip handle on fibreglass to compare.

regards...
Littlejohn.




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[jabahutt70]

Gr8 pics there John! That's very intriguing info about Tom Hall's apprentices. That whip looks to still be in pretty good condition, apart from a couple broken strands & missing the fall as you stated. I assume the bottom whip was one of Terry Jacka's? Anyway, thanks for sharing.

Steve.

[BullWhipBorton]

Great Pictures LittleJohn, thanks for putting them up. Enjoyed the bit of history too, I know myself and a few others are interested in that tidbit. Old dried out whips can be a tick to repair, and really have to be soaked in plaiting soap or leather grease to the strands doesn’t break, even still sometimes its better just to leave them as they are, glad this one had a successful ending. It would have been neat to see some a before and after picture (hint hint). Nice pic of one of Terry’s stockwhips as well.

Dan