Second: I'm Swedish, so please excuse any peculiar idiosyncrasies below.
I've been lurking here a bit, checking out the info on bullwhips and salivating over the many nice pictures of even nicer whips, picking up bits of new knowledge and generally checking the place out. Now I've decided to join, even though I may not become one of the most active posters on the forum.
A little bit about me: I've been making whips for a little over a year now, and have managed to produce about a dozen bullwhips, and a couple of snakewhips. I have tried different kinds of leather, but not surprisingly kangaroo is my favourite leather by far.
I started making whips because I wanted a bullwhip (and no, it wasn't because I watched Indy use one, although I am an Indy fan of sorts - I think it was the tannins in the new Australian leather hat which seeped into my brain and made me want a whip to go with the hat), and being unemployed I couldn't afford the high end whips I liked the looks of, and I didn't like the look of the ones I could afford. Solution: Buy Ron Edwards' book on how to make whips and some cheap leather and make one myself! Much cheaper. Of course, the first one didn't turn out too good, so I had to buy more leather and make another... and another... and so on.
Since I'm my own worst critic, I don't think any of my whips are worthy of comparison to the high quality ones I have seen here, and elsewhere on the Internet, but they perform adequately for my purposes, so I'm pretty happy with them that way. My initial intention was to just have one as a wall hanger, but now I'm not so sure what my intentions are. I've started cracking my whips after watching Adam Winrich's videos on YouTube, and quite enjoy it. My whips work surprisingly well, even though I don't have a high end professionally made whip to compare them to.
My latest whips are made with three to four plaited roo hide bellies and no bolsters, so they are definitely made with good "guts". Now that I've started using them more, I hope to see how they hold up to regular use.
Ok, enough of the long winded presentation, and let's see some pictures! (BTW, if they don't show up, it's because my web server is down, which it rarely is.)
First off is one of my early whips, made from vegetable tanned calf skin. It has a steel handle and a lead weighted core, and it cracked well when I tried the cattleman's crack with it. I sold it on eBay, though, to get money for more leather. I don't remember how long it was, but maybe 6 or 7 feet long.
My next whip is made from vegetable tanned reindeer leather. The leather is so thin, that the whip turned out very thin too, even though it has three plaited bellies and a lead weighted core. The handle is also a steel rod in this one. It cracks easily, and I have used it a little. It has a 20-plait overlay and it's 8' long. There are a couple of lumps in the last 2' or so of the thong, since I pulled off some strands there, and did a bad job of re-attaching them.
The next whip is my first kangaroo hide bullwhip. It's "traditionally" made, with a tapered wooden dowel in the handle, with a 4-plait belly glued into the handle. The overlay is a 16-plait two tone whipmaker's plait, in black and blue. It's 6' long.
This is my next most recent whip, made from veg tanned roo hide, natural tan. It's an 18-plait whipmaker's plait, 6' overlay, and it has a plaited core and bellies, and a 10" or 11" steel rod in the handle. It was my first really heavy and thick whip made from roo hide, and it cracks very easily.
The last pic I'll post here is my most recent whip. It's a 8½', 16-plait saddle tan roo hide whip with a 8" steel handle, lead weighted core and three plaited bellies. It's my most "Indy like" whip so far, and the one whip I've used the most for whip cracking.
Comments are welcome!
/Nicholas
Good to see a new whip maker so close to Finland. 
) I was born and raised in E-tuna! Small world...