First posting/First Leather Bullwhip

[willthebold]

Hey all,
Thought I'd put up a couple of pics of my first leather bullwhip. I made 2 nylon ones before this, and thought I'd give leather a go. This is a 6', 10 plait Roo hide made from some precut lace I got a hold of. My plaiting got much better on this whip than my previous two since I was really focusing on pulling with even pressure on both sides and at the same angle. Those turks knots gave me some fits though... Thanks to many on this forum whose threads I found that helped me out with various parts of the whip. I think in the near future I'm going to try for an 8', 12 plait in natural, for um, obvious reasons... I need to work on the taper, though. Are there any good resources about what the taper should be for a given length of whip?

-Will

[Cracker]

Hi Will,

You have a good start, you know how to plait and tie a turks head

Take a look at the tutorial by Bernie, it is the best out there until you get one of his DVD's. You'll learn a lot about the bellies of the whip and also binding, both very important in whip construction.

http://www.em-brand-whips.com/bulltutorial.htm

Jim

[gsolideogloria]

nice job on your first leather whip. how does it crack? keep up the good work and have fun.

Ryan

[IndianaBravo]

Nice job Will. I coudn´t tie a turk´s head at gunpoint!

[willthebold]

Thanks for the kind words guys! Combined, those knots probably took me about 3 hours to tie... It seems to be cracking pretty nicely. Overhead, cattleman's and coachman's crack all work great. The flick isn't as easy as it should be I don't think. It might be because the whip is kind of a thinner one, and doesn't have the weight for that crack to be really easy. Also, it seems like the fall likes to hit the thong a lot when I try to do the flick. Maybe I need to trim it down some?

-Will