Club Obi Wan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Sv2tTtjA
Courtesy of Jack Dagger. REALLLY shows off the Delongis system IMO. And I'm curious about Anthony's comment about nylon and a human partner. Enjoy!

Dacron, eh? That IS interesting. I found how the whip behaved more interesting than DeLongis's use of it. It did flow much like a kangaroo whip should, moreso even than nylon. And it wasn't just the person holding the whip either.

Might have to drop Steve K. an e-mail soon.

Someone dropped me a line in a PM about that Steve doesn't make heavy whips, (and that was all it said. It wasn't a negative post. I honestly don't know if the person who sent it meant to send it as a PM or a message to the forum, and as it was a PM, I'll keep it private, unless said poster chimes in.)

But the PM got me thinking, (I already had been since our Main Man Mr. Maxwell posted the link, but the PM motivated me to share.)

I don't know if Steve's whips are heavy or not. I've never had the opportunity to try one of his whips. In all honesty, the main reason I've never given his work much consideration up until now is that I find Steve's website to be difficult to navigate and to read, (I taught graphic and web design for about 7 years, so you'll have to forgive me that if you're reading, Steve. Not a criticism in ANY way of your whips.)

One of the chief problems with nylon whipmaking in general is density. They're being made out of paracord with the core pulled out. The PURPOSE of paracord is to provide an incredible tensile strength that can support immense amounts of weight without being a heavy burden for the person who has to drag it around. The nylon fibers are not as densely packed as the grained skin cells of kangaroo. Extra mass of more densely packed nylon fibers is antithetical to the purpose it was originally created for: Narrow, strong, lightweight rope.

Therefore, if anything, the use of cored nylon paracord for making quality, all-weather whips has really always been a stopgap. A brilliant application by talented braiders of adapting readily available materials for a purpose outside the materials original design specifications. They've had to make some modifications to design to make it work.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I don't think the problem with nylon is weight so much as it is mass. Nylon paracord is mostly empty air. The nylon fibers are not as tightly woven as they could be. It's light by design. It's the mass of the kangaroo hide that does most of the work in a cracking whip. Kangaroo hide can be braided more tightly than cowhide because of it's stretchyness, and therefore there's less friction, (i.e. energy loss,) between the strands, and more of the energy gets transfered to the point of the whip. It's the energy moving that mass that maintains the angular momentum necessary to keep the whip on target. Nylon doesn't display these same qualities, and while a whipmaker can braid the cord tightly to prevent significant energy loss, there's not much he can do about the weave of the fibers.

Nylon whip makers have over the years compensated for this by using various materials to add mass to the cores of their whips. Lead shot, copper bb's, lamp pull chain, electrical cable, etc. etc. etc. All because a nylon equivilent of a "Naturally falling" kangaroo hide whips was just a complete impracticality.

Several whip makers have, in my opinion, come close to kangaroo, adjusting the amounts of their weighting to better mimic the mass distribution of naturally falling kangaroo, (one need only search out my gushing review of the nylon bullwhip I got from Steve Huntress a couple years ago to see what I'm talking about.) But it's still nylon, and while it's light, and cracks easily, I have to give it a little more of a push than I do my kangaroo whips to impart enough energy to maintain the force necessary to keep it rolling out straight. But it's as close to a leather whip as I've ever felt in nylon.

But still, in a strong wind, such as was displayed in that video, my great little Huntress whip wouldn't have thrown as true as kangaroo, and it wouldn't have handled like the dacron whip in the video. Once again, you can say, "Well, it's DeLongis," but in a crosswind like that, no matter how talented the whip artist is, the evironment is still going to affect the whip, and while experience and precision can go a long way, you can't control that the whip is going to be thrown somewhat out of alignment because of the force of the wind. You can compensate for it, and that's all.

(and I think that's what Anthony was talking about, James. That to get a nylon whip to roll out more accurately, you have to give it a little more of a push, and that's why he would be hesitant to use nylon with a human target in that same situation. You have to balance running the risk of hitting them where you weren't aiming because you underpowered the whip, or hitting them with a whip that had a little more kinetic force behind it that you would have to use with a kangaroo whip.)

Now, I'm not tooting my own horn here, but I think that in that wind situation I could probably do most of the stuff Anthony was doing with my 6' Jacka whip. Not so with the nylon whip, but I doubt that Anthony could have fared much better with my nylon whip either. And that has nothing to do with my skill or his, (Lord knows I wouldn't want to go toe-to-toe against Anthony with a whip unless it was strictly a teacher/student scenario in which he was saying, "OK, that was pretty good, but that other thing you did? Stupid...here...let me show you.") It's about the tool in this case.

It seems like the dacron whip didn't need the compensation that a nylon whip would. They talked about it in terms of just "cutting right through the wind," and from my experience with Dacron, that might have a good amount to do with it, but the more significant mass, (not weight, let's not confuse the two,) of the dacron material itself, (and not the weighting material of bbs or lead shot, etc,) allowed the whip to roll out more directly in what Anthony calls "Following the handle." Nylon has a tendency in those situation to "tip over" out of alignment more than kangaroo if there's a strong wind.

I've worked with dacron fabric, and have made whip poppers with dacron bowstring material, (which are just downright nasty if they hit you. The buddy of mine and I who started working with the dacron bowstring material for poppers gave a few to Chris Camp to try out, and he was cutting through carrots and cucumbers VERY easily with them. Yeah, you can cut vegetables like that with nylon or cotton spot cord, but it's more of an "ax" like pressure cut rather than a slicing "Razor" cut. Chris was describing razor like cuts.)

Dacron is a bit more dense than nylon, and the dacron that Steve is describing is much thinner than the nylon paracord, therefore a good amount more of it needs to go into construction, adding further to the mass.

So, I think Steve may very well be onto something big: Something that bridges that nylon paracord stopgap that I mentioned earlier.

Not something that will replace kangaroo, or nylon, but something new and different that I think is VERY interesting.

I'm planning a trip to Central Florida in the hopefully not-to-distant future, (much depends right now upon my mother's health as to where and when I'll be able to break away to do that. Trying to stay close by in case I'm needed.) I hope at that point I can get in touch with Steve and get a look at one of these myself. In the meantime, I'd be interested to hear anyone elses take or of their experiences.

Well...I've been away for a while, but as per my usual posting habits, I have gone on a rather extended diatribe on whips, whip making, and whip technology. Thanks so much if you made it this far.

Happy cracking.

-Dan

Man

It's just a point, no drama please.


regards.

No drama at all! I didn't mean it as such.

Just I find the idea of dacron instead of nylon interesting. Weight has always been an issue with nylon for me as well. Not so much that they were SO light, but just how the weight was distributed. I've cracked several nylon whips that were loaded down a LOT more than kangaroo, and they were rather unwieldy as well.

Just been musing over this since I saw it, and am interested to see more about it. What's dramatic about that?

For All rasons


I like very much in especial this Apex whip (I see the video in you tube), is a very nice design, and if I buy a whip not heavy, the choice is a Apex whip made by Steve.


Regards.

Today, hanging out with Kendall Wells I got to try out two Steve K. whips, a 4ish footer and a longer handled "DeLongis" style whip. In comparison I had my Roo Louie Foxx 6' and 4' as well as a Huntress DeLongis AND a Jacka DeLongis. Steve's whips were a JOY to handle. The weight, or should I say the balance was good and the flowed nicely. As nice as my roo? I can't say. But they were...different. But a good whip. Of course earlier in this trip I handled David Morgans shop 455 and I have yet to find a whip to compare to cracking that . But that's another post.

That is a great video. I learned a bunch just watching Anthony throw that whip around.

On another note, didn't he say that he had never heard of Adam Winrich when Jack Dagger showed him the whip made by him? Here's another video of Adam cracking with Anthony at Rancho Indalo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfVR6c5 ... re=related

A misunderstanding I'm sure.

i don't try the new Apex whips, but the old made by Steve from normal paracord is very good and not realy different at roo whips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJExapdp-kE

Ejlaw wrote:That is a great video. I learned a bunch just watching Anthony throw that whip around.

On another note, didn't he say that he had never heard of Adam Winrich when Jack Dagger showed him the whip made by him? Here's another video of Adam cracking with Anthony at Rancho Indalo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfVR6c5 ... re=related

A misunderstanding I'm sure.

If memory serves me, Adam was there with Anthony once or twice WHILE Jack Dagger was there, so I think it was probably more of a joke than a misunderstanding in an, "Adam Winrich? Never heard of the guy!" kinda way.

The first video with the Dacron test whip was taken several months prior to Adam’s visit to Rancho Indalo. Anthony didn’t know him then.

Well, that explains it. I forget that the dacron whip video has been there for a while, I'd just never seen it.

Thanks, Dan!