From falls & poppers to plaiting & cracking technique, this section is dedicated in memory of Sergei, IndyGear Staff Member and Whip Guru. Always remember to keep "Celebratin' Life!"
I got the hat, the jacket, the bag, the boots, and now I've caught the bullwhip bug. I'm surprised I still have money in the bank. Well uncle sam gave me some dough to "stimulate" the economy, and now my eye of Sauron has shifted to bullwhips.
Now I've loved Indy since I was in grade school, but there is something about a bullwhip that just appeals to me, I almost feel like its calling (or cracking) to me.
It's not just Indy's bullwhip, but Zorro's, Catwoman's, etc...
To me, someone who LOVES good quality LEATHER, the bullwhip is like the epitomy of it all. With exception to the core handle, it is one hunk of leather, braided, plaited and compressed into this powerful tool that fits into your hand. I haven't ordered a whip yet as I am still researching, but when I read about the leather and cracking that you guys do I
So, besides being a tool that Indy uses, what is it about a bullwhip that appeals to you?
Hey Solo- I too have been bit by the bullwhip bug, and have been doing research on purchasing a new bullwhip. I parted with a beautiful Joe Strain, and I still kick myself, but to answer the post, one of the bullwhips major appeals is the fact that you are in control of a 950mph force!! How intense is that!! Also I have decieded that I am going to need a 10ft and a 8ft, both of which will be a Joe Strain.
Bowie wrote:Hey Solo- I too have been bit by the bullwhip bug, and have been doing research on purchasing a new bullwhip. I parted with a beautiful Joe Strain, and I still kick myself, but to answer the post, one of the bullwhips major appeals is the fact that you are in control of a 950mph force!! How intense is that!! Also I have decieded that I am going to need a 10ft and a 8ft, both of which will be a Joe Strain.
p.s. good to hear from a fellow leather junky!!
Hey Bowie, Well said! The power of it, the sound, the fine leather craftsmanship. It's all there in a well made bullwhip. Sorry to hear about your Strain. I love my Strain 8ft. New in December, and broken in quite nicely now.
For me, the bullwhip is all about the Indy costume. If I hadn't been putting the costume together, I'm not sure I would ever have had one. Once I get one in my hands, perhaps I'll change my mind.
As far as weaponry goes, I'm much more attracted to swords and rifles.
lingarn wrote:
As far as weaponry goes, I'm much more attracted to swords and rifles.
I can vouche for that. Have classic Bear bow with a leather quiver and a Windlass Steel Ranger Sword. I've thought about getting a 45 Mag Revolver but that would take a bite out of my $$, especially if it's just gonna sit there.
lingarn wrote:
As far as weaponry goes, I'm much more attracted to swords and rifles.
I can vouche for that. Have classic Bear bow with a leather quiver and a Windlass Steel Ranger Sword. I've thought about getting a 45 Mag Revolver but that would take a bite out of my $$, especially if it's just gonna sit there.
Very true, Bowie knives are my first passion (guess what my Strain helped buy ) I also enjoy throwing tomahawks, knives, shooting bow & arrow, and shooting muzzleloaders (or any gun) is a hoot. Whips are a newer hobby, and the instant gratification of hearing the crack sure is sweet. Anyway there WILL be a new Strain in my near future
My attraction started with Indy I'll admit, but it's gone far beyond simply playing dress up and knowing the Cairo Flash. The whip is an amazing tool for martial students, and there is a fascination on some level in just about everybody. Learning to take away some of the mystery and stigma when it comes to whips held by the general public is what I'm trying to do these days. There is a movement in this country to begin it as both sport and art and I can only hope to help.
I have aways been an Indy fan. It Raiders was the first movies we recorded off of HBO on our first VCR. Which seems like it was yesterday, and not decades ago. I do not have an outfit, I carry no gas mask bag, just a leather satchel, and the fedora, I can aways be found wearing, is grey. The bull whip for me is the core of Indy. As stated who would he be with out the whip.
The apeal to me was it was the tool of choice for my hero growing up. Not only could it be used to disarm an enemy, and swing to safety, it can be used to catch the girl. I had the El Cheapos when I was younger, and now that I'm older I want a good whip. That's what brought me here, I was in search of my hero's tool of choice. Since hanging out and finally joining here, I have begun to make my own whips. Finished an 8foot para-cord whip that sounds like a cannon going off, and soon will be moving to leather. I'm more of an edged weapon person, but there just is nothing like watching that whip roll out there and crack. Soon I will have a leather whip, and you will probably find in in the sachel I carry, just in case.
I think I've told this story, but it bears repeating.
I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. I was six. Up until that point, I'd had no interest whatsoever in cowboys, Indians, westerns, period action, ANYTHING. I liked Star Wars, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, etc. etc. etc. What the heck did I care about a movie where they're going to climb a big mountain to find the remains of a big wooden boat full of animal poop, (hey all I knew was, "They're trying to keep the Nazis from finding the Ark...You know...The one from the bible?")
My Mom took me to see it, as she thought I'd like it. I wasn't convinced. The only way she convinced me was to tell me that it was produced by the guy who made Star Wars, directed by the guy who make Close Encounters, and starred the guy who played Han Solo.
Well...
Ok...I guess...
So, I went. 5 minutes into the film: Our evident hero is in trouble. By the waterfall, one of his guides pulls out a gun to doublecross him. Then, out of nowhere....<Quip> WHOOOOOOSSHHHH....WHAAAAAAPOOOOOOO!
WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT?????
Shhhhh...That was a bullwhip....
A what?
My life was irrevocably changed that day, and has led me where I am today, (a scruffy-looking college professor who wears fedoras and is pretty darn handy with a bullwhip.) I decided I needed to do two things with my life that day: I needed to learn how to make movies, and I needed to learn how to use a bullwhip.
...Flash forward 26 years. The scene is 3 years, and 362 days from the time that I now write this: May 8th, 2004. My 30th Birthday. I am instructor and program director for the Electronic Media program at Ohio University Lancaster Campus. Prior to this, I have worked on feature-length films, commercials, television programming, documentaries, etc. I teach video production, video editing, lighting, graphic design, audio production....Pretty much all those things that go into movie making these days, (don't TEACH 2D and 3D effects, because there's really no place in our current curriculum for it, but I do it.) So I have 50% of that promise I made to myself covered. Now I'm working on the other half.
I HAD played with bullwhips most of my young life. I'd flat braided one out of a huge number of leather shoelaces, (had a bunch of leather ones that had been donated to my scout troop by a local shoelace factory for "Craft Projects.") I'd gone through a good number of those crappy Indian goat-leather jobs that have the sissel rope cores. I had a fairly good 12' swivel handle too. But I'd never gotten as good as I wanted to be, and I'd NEVER gotten a chance to work with a Kangaroo hide Australian one.
So, for my 30th birthday, I have chosen to take a weekend bullwhip class from Gery Deer. We go over all the particulars: Safety, history, physics, etc.
Then we get to actually USING the whip. We start with a cattleman's crack.
OK...It works like this...Allright...All straight lines...Just like Gery said...Whip stretches out behind you, and then push forward....BANG!
Holy Mary, Mother of God! I am HOOKED instantly! Crack IS addictive.
That weekend has led to 4 years of the most lasting friendships, and most rewarding projects I've ever done. It's become quite an obsession. Not just cracking them, but research on the history, design, development, and cultural significance of whips in general...
But that really doesn't answer the real question, does it?
What do I love about it?
I have tinkered with all sorts of tools, weapons, and gadgets. Swords, knives, guns, staffs, all sorts of bizarre weapons. The whip is the most personal to me.
In many martial arts, weapon forms are not even about self-defence or becoming deadly, they are about extending your will and consciousness into an external object. Letting the sword become an extension of the arm. Transference of force/qi...etc. etc. etc. It is a mental and spiritual practice that has practical application.
The whip is by far THE MOST responsive, natural, and effective tool I have found for this thusfar. It ties into the above on so many levels...from physical to spiritual. You are channeling force and energy...That's what a whip does. It focuses it down a smaller and smaller channel, causing the whip to accelerate and ultimately break the sound barrier. Extending energy from your body through your limb, and out the end of the whip. It's just amazing. They are an extension of me, and extension of my will. And cutting a target with the fall of the whip is like tapping it with my finger, (at least on a good day...)
On a more philosophical note. The whip, (or my whips anyway,) are made of animal skin. They are flesh that has become an extension of my flesh. They are the remains of a dead animal brought back to life through the energy from my hands, (that sounds far more bizarre than I actually mean it.) I feel a much more tangible connection to that than I do to steel.
They are coils of tense flesh that roll out and explode, traveling at amazing speeds, like the animal they came from. The feel, the smell even is a very tangible, personal thing, (Something odd that Chris Camp does when you hand him a whip is that before he cracks it, or even uncoils it, he'll smell it. Well, some people might think it's odd, but I understood it immediately. Can't exactly explain it, but I get it.)
They are all hand made, hand cut. Each one unique from the other by craftsmen who take incredible attention and pride in their work. It is fashioned by their bare hands. Usually no machines. (I can almost guarantee that if you buy a production type sword that even saw a forge and wasn't just ground down from bar stock, that there was a power hammer involved, even if it says "Hand Forged.")
3,000 years of technological development. 3,000 years of history, and for the most part, the tools, the concepts, the techniques, and the fabrication have not changed.
I don't know really. I guess it's a combination of things that strikes one person as special but not the next. There are certain objects like that, usually it's something that's had some appeal during childhood I think. For me part of it was understanding how it was made. I had only pics to go on back in '81 and precious little else. An uncle had one which he'd made himself 25 or 30 years before, but it was no Indy, and a neighboour a few houses down had one his folks had brought back from Mexico or Texas, and was probably a fairly cheap one. So when I decided to make my own (story of my life), the mystery of figuring it out must've played a big part in the appeal. Nowadays it's the craftsmanship, the easthetic beauty of a well-made object of functional art, the feel of it, the smell of the leather too I guess. and naturally, the sound of it cracking. It's a whole can of worms for me hehehe.
I'm with you on the effect of that opening scene in Raiders, and the whip coming out of nowhere. Part of the allure of the bullwhip was (and still is) for me about the mystery--the sudden power coming out of nowhere. I still get a kick out of this now when people see my whips. It's as if I've just casually shown them a million dollars--something they've never seen before in their lives--and may never again. It elicits a small shock from them just seeing one up close. Watching it uncoil. Then seeing it in action. . . !
When I got my first good one about two years ago, my dad was excited and kept asking me to bring it up to his house and demonstrate it for him. When I did, and cracked it (only once) he told me that he'd had no idea it would be that loud (I aimed at his house so that the sound would reflect back at us)!
What gets me about whips? They're a lost art. An Art, AND a skill. And if you make your own like I do, it adds an entire new dimension to it.
I like it because it's technical while still being dead simple. A whip is the story of balance, of duality: you can't use it indiscriminately and expect to come out unscathed, yet in the hands of a master it can do things that leave people speechless. There's an ebb-and-flow Zen-goodness about it.
Oh, and the chicks dig it.
P.S. Oh, and Dan: Man, we oughtta talk shop sometime. Our stories sound an awful lot alike in some ways....Good one!
I'd second that about the women liking it. I can remember I used to go horseriding on weekends with a girl when we were teenagers. I always carried my whip. One time when we were about to saddle up I said, now don't get frightened. I'm going to wrap you with the whip around the waist. Is that OK? It won't hurt but it will make a loud crack". Yes, she agreed to it. I cracked the whip loudly and wrapped her, and something passed between us. It was a very unforgetable moment. We didn't end up getting married but years later she told me she had a big crush on me then. I still think about her!
Ahem, sorry about that. As to how I first got interested in whipcracking and specifically a bullwhip....I and my family had been involved in horseriding since small kids. We would hang around farms and farm people a lot. There was always talk about whip cracking, eg, the bigger kids always said how great a skill it was to be able to crack a real whip. This impressed me as a kid, because I was too small to do it. An uncle was a sheep grazier and was known within the family as often being seen with a whip over a shoulder when we visited him on the farm. So to a kid a whip became something associated with impressive adults. Kids always said that a whip cracks because a piece of the leather comes back and hits another piece of the leather, making the crack sound. We didn't know any better.
Then I went to see Raiders in 1981. I didn't want to see it particularly, having seen the trailer and thinking it looked fairly pathetic. I remember in the trailer seeing the Cairo whip cracking scene, and thinking, well that's reasonably interesting...this guy cracks a whip. But nothing more. Then sitting in the cinema when I saw the actual movie, the scene by the waterfall, the guy with the Aussie looking hat (but with a high crown) spins around and out slashes a whip, causing the pistol to go flying through the air. I was totally hooked from that point onwards. I loved the look and the sound and the idea of it...a piece of leather defeating a gun. The skill of it appealed to me.
Then my mum located a 5 or 6 foot cheapo short handle bullwhip for me, rope core, about 6 or 8 plait, with a solid leather wrist loop. This didn't last long, and I then bought an 8 foot redhide Aussie pattern bullwhip (10" handle) from a farm supplies store. This was brilliant. So although Australian I learned how to crack with a bullwhip, not a stockwhip. I then slowly learned how to make my own whips, mainly out of roohide. I learned how to crack whips for 5 solid years, and became fairly advanced. Then my career etc got in the way, and now about 20 years later I bought a whip again for fun. It's a good clean fun hobby I reckon.
) I also enjoy throwing tomahawks, knives, shooting bow & arrow, and shooting muzzleloaders (or any gun) is a hoot. Whips are a newer hobby, and the instant gratification of hearing the crack sure is sweet. Anyway there WILL be a new Strain in my near future 
