Whip Basics. The Forum

Well, it's finally finished bar the waxing. I present Scrappy Snake, a 6' whip with a sinew-bound TT core, two sinew-bound bellies (4- and 8-plt) and a 14-plt overlay on Dark and Light Blue, Chocolate/Rust and Silver/Black. These are genuinely the last few bits of cord I had left at the time so when it all went wrong the first time I had no choice but to undo the entire whip and start again from scratch.

I've had a few cracks out of it and while needing a bit more wrist action to get the snap going, rolls out well. I'm hoping for more improvement after a wax. When that's done I'll post up some more and better pictures for the Donation thread.

Great going! Pathchwork Scrappy like the quilts. I love it!

Oooh I like the way it looks, almost metallic!

I was thinking exactly the same thing, Rachel - a quilt. I like it!

Sir Roger, for scraps that's looking surprisingly nice.
Good job on the 6 strand fall hitch too.
Nicely done.

Ron

Damned you ALL and your perfect fall knots! *shakes fist*. Curses!!! I shall prevail!!

In other news, That looks really great Roger. I love it so much. Perfect colors...Brown and blue look so awesome together...

Jessie Edwards wrote:Damned you ALL and your perfect fall knots! *shakes fist*. Curses!!! I shall prevail!!

In other news, That looks really great Roger. I love it so much. Perfect colors...Brown and blue look so awesome together...

Well don't count me in that lot! My fall knots stink!

Roger's fall knot looks great.

Jessie Edwards wrote:Damned you ALL and your perfect fall knots! *shakes fist*. Curses!!! I shall prevail!!

Jessie, let me tell you a story. At the ages from 18 to 21 or so, I had my first very own car. It was a Lada 2105, which was stupidly hilarious and possible to fix with anything even remotely resembling a tool. Gotta love Russians for that. One day I had to put in a new distributor, so I picked up the new parts, took out the old ones, replaced them with the new ones, and with much pride went to work using a timing strobe to get the ignition timing juuuust right. Just as the Haynes repair manual told me. And what I ended up with, was an engine that just barely ran on its own. Not too motivating to say the least. After re-checking, re-re-checking and much banging of head against proverbial wall, I just decided to go with the strategy universally known as "fuck all them fancy stuffs and use what was given to me at birth". So what I did was toss the timing strobe away from sight, time the ignition by turning the distributor by hand while ever so angrily throttling the running engine via the ancient art of "the gas pedal is all the way over there, so let's just open the carburetor barrels by hand". And it worked. The damn thing never before nor since ran as good, and all it took was hands and one the five senses that Aristotle dude talked about way back when drunken and nerdy philosophers were considered cool.

That little story above is pretty much how I learned to do a decent fall hitch. Actually it's a series of hitches, and only the first one should go where the instruction manual tells you to put it. Like a distributor has to go in the only place it fits in an engine. After that, choosing the next strand to hitch is up to you and the whip, and if a piece of written instructions tells you otherwise, just go with what you feel works best for the next hitch. This may sound like new age zen crap, but it's totally not. Trust me.

And for the whip. Rog, that looks really cool, and I see the quilt thing in it too. I absolutely love stuff that looks like chaos until you step back and see the entire picture. There's just one thing. Going from a 14-plait heel to a 6-plait point will totally give you a violent drop in mass per length where thong turns into a fall, and that's the only thing I would've done differently. A fall with a built in tapered weight would probably do miracles to what you got there. That said, this is just my brain talking, which does not equal actually handling that whip.

Also there seems to be lots of opinions about snake whips. In fact, the way I found this forum was via watching one of Robby's videos where the first thing he says is "I don't like snake whips", and not much after that admitting that they are actually quite fun. Snakes have always intrigued me somehow, and for me they always feel like I have to use my wrist less than with bullwhips. Using a snake is for me more of a full-body kind of thing. Hard to explain, and maybe it's just me.


- Pokkis

. Thanks Pokkis

That looks... a lot better than I expected, if I'm honest :P. Fantastic job Sir Rog!

Matt Henderson wrote:That looks... a lot better than I expected, if I'm honest :P

I find your lack of faith disturbing.


- Pokkis

Thanks all. Pokkis, I think you may be right. I'll be waxing it a bit later and hopefully the wax in the fall will add a little more weight but if not, I'll have to look into making a weighted fall. Not done one before.

*choking noises from the insolent Imperial* Yes, Lord Pokkis

Don't try to frighten us with your perfect fall knot ways sir Roger. That ancient religion hasn't helped me to create such a heavenly constructed fall knot.

No seriously, that looks astoundingly great. I lile the scrappy, it has a sort of Scottish flavour to it. Very nice and clean work............... ESPECIALLY that gorgeous fall knot.

Sven

Definitely a unique color combo! The tan cords make it look almost rusty.

Nice fall hitch!

To me the fall hitch is always something like a business card. Some people don't give a shit how the fall hitch looks. Others do a great job. The fall hitch is always one of the first things, I take a look at. The way it is made tells me a lot about the quality and passion of a whip maker.

Robby

Thanks again all. I've never struggled with Fall hitches. I followed Ron Edward's instructions in How to Make... and adapted it depending on how many strands the end is.

Here is a picture I found here on what looks like a french site (http://je-peux-le-faire.e-monsite.com/p ... rtie3.html) on how to do a neat fall hitch.

This is the way I've always done it.