Club Obi Wan

Well the tan one is older, but the black one is more recent. Hope you like.


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Shiny!
Very good!

Hehehe yeah. Shellac makes everything look new and shinny! It's not as flexible as I would like, but it works pretty good.

Glad you like )

Franco

Is shellacking a whip a common thing?

It's fairly common, yes, though not absolutely necessary. A whip will have a good life without it, provided it's cared for of course, but as kangaroo leather does not take a shine as readily as cowhide, shellac helps there. It's the finishing touch a whipmaker puts on his work. This helps to bind the lace used in the covering knots too, though most of that is done simply by virtue of the knot being tied on tightly. It also partially seals the leather and this is a bit of an added protection if you will. The great thing about it is that because it only partially seals the leather, it does not prevent leather conditionner from penetrating into the leather. It's amazing when you think that this comes from a bug! Woodworkers will sometimes use it, but not very often as it requires a lot of work to pull off well. It is common in Asian woodworking and has been used in that part of the world for a long time. Thankfully, the process is much simpler for a whip )

Very nice looking whips Digger !

Thank you very much )

They crack nicely too! These days I'm working on getting more weight further down the thong, we'll see what happens with the next batch.

In the meantime, here's an old photo, well actually it's a scan of a photo, of whip handles I made for the film 300.



When I realized they were going to have whips on this film, which I was already working on, I went to see the props people and asked to see the whips they had. God they were awful leather sausages made with only two strands winding around God knows what for a core (the well-meaning props girl was obviously not a plaiter). Seeing this I quickly offered to make them better ones. I brought some whips I had lying around the house and they said yes. So I spent my days off making a few handles for them. They only wanted the handles for the hero whips since they rightly decided it would be too dangerous for actors to handle the whips (no time for training) and so the actual thong part of the whips were going to be added in later with CG. So I made two 12 plait handles and one 8 plait(the middle one). They were all nice and shinny and the first thing the props guys did is take a sandpaper to them! Argh! It broke my heart, but of course this made perfect sense. I also supplied them with old beat-up whips, some very cheap, which I had in the closet, as background props, with the very stern warning that they only distribute them to the extras at the last minute and that they take them back straight away after the take, on top of giving them all a warning to not try to use the whips as they would undoubtedly hurt themselves or someone ele. Surprisingly, they listened and no one got hurt. I couldn't keep them because first of all they'd paid for them, and secondly because the studio wanted to keep them in their archives. They were very, very strict about secrecy and such, so I couldn't show these until the film came out, and by then I'd forgotten I even had this photo hehehe. So that was my little story. Sorry the pic is so bad, the props guy took it very fast and made me a poor laser copy of it. Hope you like.

Franco

I absolutely love 300. A great, great film.

Good look'n whips there.

Good God... gorgeous photography.

Sergei wrote:Good God... gorgeous photography.

Yes, great pics! What kind of camera did you use? Also, was it onboard flash, or umbrella?

Hehehe I'm just trying to duplicate Bernardo's pics here gentlemen hehe.

I just laid a piece of white cardboard on the floor near a window, turned the flash off and used the widest setting. On the close-ups I went macro.

The camera is a Canon Powershot SD1000.

Taking pictures of whips can be a real pig, the probem is the quality of todays cameras, the whip looks and feels perfect and when you take the picture the camera shows up leather dressing in seams and little pinches in laces not visable to the naked eye that make the whip look really rough.....

Very impressive work Franco, I especially like the black bullwhip. Great picture quality too. I know I have a hard time taking really good whip photos, especially of my black whips. If your not careful you are going to have people asking you to make whips for them in here!

Also, Thanks so much for posting the story and image of the "300" handles you made. I have an interest in other movie whips as well and I found that a really great read.

Dan

Thanks Dan, much obliged )

If folks want to pick me over all the other whipmakers here, I think they should get their heads checked. I appreciate the compliment, but I'm small fries in comparison... But hey, I'll take the good when I can get it.

I just realized that the real issue with taking pics of my black whip is the contrast. I am still learning about this camera, so I'm just goofing off here, but basically if you lower the contrast between the white background and the black whip (by shooting in indirect light) and expose for the black of the whip, you can then boost the brightness later on to bring the whites back up a bit and it shouldn't affect the blacks too much. The idea is to not let the on-board sensors get overwhellmed by all the predominating white of the background (in a wide shot) and to really expose for the blacks so you get details out of the thong. Well that's the theory at least. That's why the macro shots came out nicely; more black in the image for the sensors to react to.