Club Obi Wan

I just popped in to the Tandy Leather Factory up here. They are having a sale on the Tejas Kangaroo lace. This is 1/8" x 25 yards.

I've been looking through the posts to try to find anything about making a whip and can't seem to find where it mentions the plaits. Would this be usefull for the plaiting in a whip or is it too narrow? What size then should the plaits be?

How much length of lace would be needed for an 8-foot whip? How much for a 6 foot whip?

Thanks
David

Hi David,

It's really hard to make a whip with precut lace. Moreover it's rather expensive.

anyway if you want to know the lace width to cover any core underneath, just take the circunference of you core, and multiply by 1,5.
then divide the total by the number of strands of your braid.

for your lace: you said 1/8": let's say 3,175mm(sorry but I'm not very confortable with inches fractions )
For example: you decide to make a 4-plait: 4x3,175=12,7mm.
12,7/1,5=8,47.
8,47 is the circunference your core should be. (at the widest section of course)
You see what I mean?

As for the length, you didn't mention if you're braiding the belly or the overlay.
Anyway, for any length you intend to cover with a braid, the total lentgh of each strand is:
("final lentgh"x1,5)+10inch.

I hope it helps you somehow?

I still think using precut lace to make a whip is difficult and much expensive than cutting hide. More over, don't forget your precut lace is not tapered.......

Good luck

JP

David,
as Jean mentioned, the basic math for the width and length of strands is not that complicated.

I have made a whip using the exact same lace you talk about when I started and I ended up needing 24 strands for the overlay! AND I had some other leather for the bellies that was wider, so it did sort of work out, but I would not recommend you going this route. If you insist on using pre-cut lace, which is not the way to go if you want to make a whip, at least get wider strands (at least 1/4"), this way you can make bellies that will support your whip and when you get to the overlay, you can still make a whip with it. A few whipmakers sell pre-cut lace of different width, just look at some websites.

The better solution of course, is to buy a hide or two, and a couple of basic tools and start experimenting with cutting your own lace. This will give you all the freedom in the world to cut and shape your whip the way you want it.

In other words, that pre-cut Tandy lace is fine if you just want to make some small project like a necklace or a lanyard, but of little actual worth if you really want to make a whip.

As a final note, I'm going to tell you the same speech I tell everybody who is starting out in whipmaking: Be careful! Please understand that whenever you start playing around with knives and blades (which you must in order to make whips), you are doing something that is intrinsically dangerous, and I urge you to use every safety precautions at your disposal to avoid injury. This is not a joke. The blades we use are as sharp as any scalpel and WILL cut you VERY BADLY if you do not adopt a strict safety procedure from the get go. I use box cutter type of knives for most of my work and I ALWAYS close the blade EVERY SINGLE TIME I have finished cutting. Even if it is only for a second or two in between two cuts, I always close the knife. Imagine wanting to wipe an annoying bead of sweat running down your face and slicing yourself because for a split-second, you forgot your knife was in the same hand and the blade was still open... That is EXACTLY how accidents happen; inattention and a lack of respect for the potential danger you wield. So if nothing else, always close your blade. Look at it this way, it only takes a fraction of a second to open it up again, so it's not like it's a big deal to open and close all the time, but it might prevent you from serious injury. Even with such careful handling, it is almost inevitable to not cut yourself if you do this long enough, the question is, how badly do you want that accident to be? It's up to you to decide if that accident is a case of running for a band-aid or the hospital emergency room... I'm not trying to be melodramatic or make myself interesting here, I'm telling it to you straight. Be CAREFUL!
Cheers,

Franco

Franco,

I've cut off the tip of my thumb more times than I care to remember...one of these days it will stop growing back!

Oh and the kangaroo from Tandy if I remember right is machine cut, not hand cut...so it hasn't been stretched, and once you start plaiting you might end up with some very uneven strands.

If you don't want to cut the lace yourself you can get it hand cut from david morgan: http://www.davidmorgan.com/index.php?cPath=7_11_195_341

or you could probably talk a lot of whipmakers into cutting up some lace for you...but the best way is to learn it yourself.

Louie
http://bullwhips.org

At $84 for 60 feet of lace, that's gonna be one EXPENSIVE whip when you're done!

But you'll get better results from hand cut than you'd get from machine cut lace.

If you are buying precut instead of cutting your own, cost may not be as much of an issue.

Louie

Louie, you took the words out of my mouth!

Franco

kwad wrote:At $84 for 60 feet of lace, that's gonna be one EXPENSIVE whip when you're done!

Actually, the sale has 25 yards for $48 - that's why I was wondering if it would be useful.

All the instructions I've come across say how wide to cut the bellies - none mention how wide the plaiting needs to be.

I don't have David Morgan's books yet - that's why I was wondering if this would be useful.
The consensus seems to be that it would be too thin - which is what I thought.

Thanks
David

dkwd wrote:

kwad wrote:At $84 for 60 feet of lace, that's gonna be one EXPENSIVE whip when you're done!

Actually, the sale has 25 yards for $48 - that's why I was wondering if it would be useful.

All the instructions I've come across say how wide to cut the bellies - none mention how wide the plaiting needs to be.

I don't have David Morgan's books yet - that's why I was wondering if this would be useful.
The consensus seems to be that it would be too thin - which is what I thought.

Thanks
David

Hi dkwd
To work out how wide the plaiting needs to be measure the diameter of what your plaiting over times by 4.5 divide that by the number of strands,
so say 19mm times 4.5= 85.5 divided by say 12 for a 12 plait = 7.1. Therefore the strands would need to be a little over 7mm if that makes sense lol.
Graeme

dkwd wrote:

kwad wrote:At $84 for 60 feet of lace, that's gonna be one EXPENSIVE whip when you're done!

Actually, the sale has 25 yards for $48 - that's why I was wondering if it would be useful.


Thanks
David

I was referring to the handcut 1/4" 'roo lace for sale at Morgans website.
Man, that stuff is expensive.

Hey that's funny, I used this stuff as my first hat band whip about 6 years ago. That lace is very small to work with.










Gus Caicedo Jr
www.purewhips.com

It's all about perspective, $84 for 60 feet is a lot of money...but so is $48 for 75 feet.

The way I see it I'd rather spend $75 on a hide and ruin it learning to cut. And end up with cheap handcut lace for the rest of my life. However if I had no desire to learn to cut roo or just wanted to try plaiting, then paying more to me wouldn't matter.

I compare it to getting the oil changed in my car. I have three options:

Expensive: Dealership
Less Expensive: Quickie-lube
Least Expensive: Do it myself

there's no right or wrong way to get your oil changed or your kangaroo lace and everyone has their own needs whether it is convenience, price or pride...or a combination of any of those.

Louie
http://bullwhips.org

Louie is right. Just thinking about cutting with the thumbnail scared me a lot. I bought one very cheap (around $20 for a hide the size of a roo hide) and brittle and thin cowhide and that's how I learned to cut with the thumbnail. I basically threw the lace to the garbage after I finished. It was useless. But when I got to cutting roo, I wasted no hide.

I think cutting with the thumbnail is one of the biggest myths in whipmaking. Sounds difficult, but you learn pretty fast.

ATB,

Aldo.