ideal popper condition?

[slowdevil]

As I said, I'm pretty new to bullwhips. The current popper at the end of my whip looks to be in pretty good condition, but the frays are very long. Would I get a better crack if I cut it down a tad? It seems like long frays would give a softer pop, in my naive opinion, granted I'm still only getting a crack about one in ten tries anyway.

Justin

[Bufflehead Jones]

I would say it is just the reverse. GraveRobberGreg has had some of his poppers have the fray get fairly short and I thought it made a more muffled crack. When he put on a new popper, it went back to being loud.

[Mola Ram]

As I said, I'm pretty new to bullwhips. The current popper at the end of my whip looks to be in pretty good condition, but the frays are very long. Would I get a better crack if I cut it down a tad? It seems like long frays would give a softer pop, in my naive opinion, granted I'm still only getting a crack about one in ten tries anyway.

Justin

Thats exactly what you do want. The more frayed the cracker, the better the crack you are going to get. If you were to cut it down, you would need to put a new one on sooner, and the cracks wouldent be anywhere as easy to do. If anything, you would deffinatly hear a diffrence in the sound the whip makes when you crack it with a shorter popper.
Adam

[slowdevil]

Thanks for your help, guys! I was ready to grab the scissors and see what happens.

[BullWhipBorton]

Too much fluff at the end of a popper/cracker is no good, it will cause it to want to float in the air and not produce as sharp a crack. I find around 2 - 2 1/2 inches is ideal and with nylon it will last a fair amount of cracking. Just as an FYI, If it starts to wear down to less then an inch, you can also tie a new knot lower on the popper and then undo the old knot to give you more of that frayed tip to get a bit more use out of them.

Dan

[Mola Ram]

Too much fluff at the end of a popper/cracker is no good, it will cause it to want to float in the air and not produce as sharp a crack. I find around 2 - 2 1/2 inches is ideal and with nylon it will last a fair amount of cracking. Just as an FYI, If it starts to wear down to less then an inch, you can also tie a new knot lower on the popper and then undo the old knot to give you more of that frayed tip to get a bit more use out of them.

Dan

It can also keep getting tangled on the whip, and tangled up onto itself.
I guess I assumed It wasent that big...... 8-[ I was thinking density of the twine, if all the treads had stretched apart or not, instead of overall length.