Club Obi Wan

I got my 'roohide about six years ago. It was a 10-footer, or so I thought. It "looked" 10 feet, just by eyeballing it. It's always been just a bit sluggish and slow. I could never figure out why my old 9-footer was so much faster. It's just 12" difference. The 9-footer nearly cracks itself. Then today I was talking about it and my wife commented that it looked longer than 10 feet. So I whipped out a tape measure...... TWELVE FEET, 8 INCHES!! I sent it to Jim a while back, and he repaired a broken hitch for me. As I understand it, you have to loose a bit of length when you create new hitches. With that in mind, I'll bet this sucker was a 13-footer!!!! Man that really explains a lot! And I can't tell you how stupid I feel, owning it for six years and never realizing it was nearly THREE feet longer than traitorous "eyeballs" led me to think I think I will definately be having it shortened

Are you including the length of the fall in your measurement?

Buffelhead JOnes is right. On measuring a bullwhip, you only measure the braided portion - from the butt of the handle down to the half-hitches that hold the fall, but not the fall itself. With the cost of roo these days, I doubt a whip maker will make you a bullwhip for you with 2 or 3 extra feet. That is a lot of material. As far as repairing broken hitches, that might shorten the whip by an inch or two.

Shortening a whip is a bad idea. I discussed this with David Morgan when I purchased a used 12 footer ( a morgan)a few years back. His opinion was to leave it alone - I wanted it shortened to a 10 footer. The reason being is that when a whip is made for a certain length, there is a taper to the overall length of the whip and the laces are tapered as well. In other words the diameter of the whip is designed to be a certain width from the start and in the end of the braid. The laces are cut accordingly to acomodate the slow gradual, graceful taper from start to end. So overall a whip is constructed so that its diameter gradually tapers down its entire length, from the “thick” handle to the “thin” tip of the popper. When you crack a whip, energy applied to the handle travels down the length of the whip. Through the conservation of energy, the whip accelerates as its diameter shrinks. The pop is breaking the sound barrier. On some whips, all I have to do is just throw the whip with just two fingers and the whip pops. On some others I have to throw my complete body into it and it may pop the sound barrier.

The net of it is, the whip would not be as lively by doing such a surgery. So the art and science of a whip makes each one unique. This all in the hands of the whipmaker. How well they have tuned that taper to have a complete and efficient transfer of energy. Just look at your whip, and visualize where the cut would be in making it shorter. You can see the taper looks stunted - incomplete. And that translates to a loss in kinetic energy.

Nope, I'm not that dumb That's the length from the butt to the end of the braid. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe I won't do it. That old 9-footer is shortened by over a foot, and it handles excellent. [/i]