Club Obi Wan

We've got paracord, dacron, other cords, I've seen artificial leather whips, vinyl whips and so on.
Today I've found another one. To be honest I would never think about it as a material for whipmaking.
You know what it is ?
http://tubewhips.com/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Simple and enviroment friendly
Best regards

They look rubley..................

Certainly interesting.

Did you look at their kangaroo stockwhips? They sell a 14 plait roo stockwhip. What's up with that????

You think they'd know that starting a plaiting with a number of strands that is not a multiple of 4 is a no no. It works but it could

work, and look better...

I never knew that, so just out of interest why must it be a multiple of 4...? Is it a symmetry thing.

Yes it's symmetry thing, but you have to appreciate that with symmetry comes functionality. So in a 12 plaits whip for example, you have six strands going in one direction during plaiting and six going in the other, but it doesn't end there, to plait this the sequence would be under 3/over 3 on either side, so the plait is completely symmetrical. But on a 14 strand plait, you have 7 strands on either side ok, but when you get to plaiting, you have to go under 4/over 3 and under 3/over 4 on the other side. So you see you can still make an odd-numbered plait, why do it when you get a better result with a plait count that is a multiple of four? That makes me weary of how well the whipmaker understands the process...

I love the whip stuff. I always wanted a proper bullwhip after seeing Raiders when i was a kid. I looked everywhere and could only ever find the £6 to £10 variety at those shops that sold all the Indian gear, wooden elephants, scented sticks, curio's etc. Top quality, string core, about ten thousand strands of scrap leather for the plaiting, but for some unexplained reason i loved it, well for about a day and then i just wanted the real deal.

I'm in the process of making stuff out of leather every day, but would never have the time to make a whip, not only does it look very hard to get right, i wouldn't have the time to practice getting one right either, so.............. i'll leave the whips to you guys.

I do like to know about the process though, its a real skill by the looks of things.

lol, what Franco said

I had actually thought of using rubber tubes to plait with when I was a kid and I did fool around a little bit with it, but I found that it was impossible to get an even tension, because unlike leather that only has so much give before it becomes rigid, when you pull on a rubber strand what happens is that it thins out and deforms in a concave fashion and because rubber doesn't behave anything like leather, it's impossible to have any indicators that would help keep a semblance of continuity in the pull, and not being a robot, I do variate from one pull to the next a bit.

The other thing is rubber tubes have seams in them and while those are fairly strong when the tube is whole and intact, they become a bit more unstable once the integrity of the tube has been compromised by cutting into it, so you would get tears here and there.

I would expect these whips to have a bit of an elastic band effect when thrown, since it is essentially a big rubber band. That can't be pleasant on the whip cracker...

Over all I found it to be too unstable a material for whipmaking. BUT to be fair, it is incredibly dense, so it has a good weight to it and no doubt delivers a powerful blow, and it is cheap: at $71 for a 6' it's a hard price to beat and there is the added advantage of recycling petrol-based products that would otherwise end up in landfills.

Perhaps rubber would be better suited for bolsters in nylon whips than as the main plaiting material...

Eh, my two cents...

A while back I had considered trying out bike inner tubes for plaiting, but I came to a similar conclusion before actually trying it,

just based off what I know from the inner tubes.

Using them as bolsters on nylon whips probably wouldn't be too bad an idea to try out...

Tomek!

It depends on how thick is the rubber. 16plt nylon whips are as thick as typical 12plt roo whips. If you put two bolsters inside you would get very thick whip that would need higher number of strands to cover it. Anyway I wouldn't use it. I stiffen my transition areas with short pieces of ducttape and artificial sinew and it works great, they break in with use, just like normal leather whips; if I want to make stiffer transition I can make it without any problem.
Guys, have you ever seen other alternatives or interesting materials? I've read somewhere that dolphins skins were also used in whipmaking, but I don't remember what was the source of this info.

So i guess we might see Indy bungee jumping in any future adventures and carrying a puncture repair kit in his bag................

they seem to crack quite well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pALRergwz0Y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They appear loud but the video is not clear enough to see the whip's action.

I've always wanted to try using that thick, dense, rubber gasket material as an alternative material for falls on nylon whips. (Haven't found any thing thick enough yet )

However, I don't think I'd want to make a whole whip out of innertube rubber.
Probably get a little stretchy at the point, plus, rubber breaks down pretty quickly if not kept in ideal conditions. Eventually it will either get hard and crunchy, or go soft and gooey.

It would be a shame to put all that work into a whip that would only last a few years.

Well he claims it lasts as long as a regular whip... I don't see him saying anything else, "my whip's only last three years at best"

wouldn't happen. It is from tires right? Tires can last a very long time, even in rough conditions, maybe it does last a while. I

don't see it lasting as long as a well taken care of leather or nylon whip, but it may last longer than a couple years.

I cracked a rubber bullwhip that someone had a few years ago, unfortunately I don't remember the maker. Honestly I wasn't a big fan of it's action. It was very light throughout and I didn't think it threw very well. I'm sure someone could make it heavier, but the one I tried was in my opinion way to light.

Also the rubber whip that I cracked was stretchy. What I mean by that is you could pull on the lash and stretch it. So if you were to do a flick with it. In this instance the lash will be laid out in front of you. So you slide the whip behind you (lash still on the ground) then lift the lash up into the air behind you. As you start to throw forward the lash will stretching behind you. Then somewhere in the middle-ish of the crack the stretch will be gone. Then at the end of the crack the lash will stretch again around the time the whip cracks.

So again what's happening in my head is you are getting a boost of energy when the whip's looses its initial stretch. This is good. But then it looses energy at it retightens up. This is bad. Then it stretches again which is using up energy. This is bad. But then that loss of stretch becomes energy in the opposite direction which will give you a little dishrag type effect at the end. This may or may not be good, it really depends on at what point the whip actually cracks.

If I remember right the guy who had the rubber bullwhip said he got it off ebay, so odds are there's room for improvement in the design. I wish I remembered more about the whip other than it was plaited loosely and you could stretch it.

Hope that helps the rubber whip discussion.

Louie

louiefoxx wrote:I cracked a rubber bullwhip that someone had a few years ago, unfortunately I don't remember the maker. Honestly I wasn't a big fan of it's action. It was very light throughout and I didn't think it threw very well. I'm sure someone could make it heavier, but the one I tried was in my opinion way to light.

Also the rubber whip that I cracked was stretchy. What I mean by that is you could pull on the lash and stretch it. So if you were to do a flick with it. In this instance the lash will be laid out in front of you. So you slide the whip behind you (lash still on the ground) then lift the lash up into the air behind you. As you start to throw forward the lash will stretching behind you. Then somewhere in the middle-ish of the crack the stretch will be gone. Then at the end of the crack the lash will stretch again around the time the whip cracks.

So again what's happening in my head is you are getting a boost of energy when the whip's looses its initial stretch. This is good. But then it looses energy at it retightens up. This is bad. Then it stretches again which is using up energy. This is bad. But then that loss of stretch becomes energy in the opposite direction which will give you a little dishrag type effect at the end. This may or may not be good, it really depends on at what point the whip actually cracks.

If I remember right the guy who had the rubber bullwhip said he got it off ebay, so odds are there's room for improvement in the design. I wish I remembered more about the whip other than it was plaited loosely and you could stretch it.

Hope that helps the rubber whip discussion.

Louie

I think Arturo Rodriguez makes them out of rubber and sells them on that site.

I use rope for whips, but that has been around for a long time, so it isn't a new alternative strictly.

Aldo.