Unique Bullwhip Handle

[louiefoxx]

About a week or so ago I was at a junk shop and found a piece of shark spine / vertebrae and thought it would make a neat whip handle. Here's the shark spine when I got it:

And here's the finished bullwhip:


You can see more pics of this and of how I made it on my blog at: http://bullwhips.org

It was a fun project and I think it ended up being a cool looking whip!

Louie

[Cajunkraut]

Unique inspiration, Louie!

[Zuiun]

Fantastic! How durable would this be for use? Or would this be more of a "display only" type of whip?

[louiefoxx]

I'm going to imagine it's fairly durable. I gave it some test cracks and it didn't feel fragile, but then I also wouldn't back the truck over it.

I've found a picture of shark vertebrae used as a riding crop:

I've also seen a shark vertebrae cane that felt pretty solid.

For my bullwhip I have a piece of spring steel that has the core and belly attached to it, then that is fitted into a hole that I drilled down the middle of the vertebrae. There's also some epoxy in there to hold everything together. So the vertebrae is around a solid handle, meaning it's not taking near the stress it would if it was the only component of the handle.

Here's a pic of the core and belly coming out from inside the shark spine:


hope that helps!

Louie

[Blake Bruning]

I don't think anyone has ever tried that before. Way to think outside of the box! What a novelty.