page 1   page 2   page 3   page 4   page 5   page 6   page 7 The construction of this whip is primarily based on the procedure used by Bernie Wojcicki in his "How To Make A Bullwhip" tutorial DVDs. For more info on the DVDs, click here. Knot Foundation Sunday February 8, 2004 Step 18: Take the arms of the + sign shaped piece of leather and fold them back and bind them tight. Do each one in turn. Continue wrapping with the waxed thread to build up the butt end and give it a round shape. When done wrapping, use about 4 staples to hold it all together and then trim off the loose flaps on the leather. Then ROLL the butt foundation to smooth it and round out the shape.       NOTES: Knots Sunday February 8, 2004 Step 19: I had a piece of lace that measured 6' 3" long that had been split, skived, and stretched. The width of the lace was 5mm. I cut the one end of the lace into a taper and screwed it into the back of my permalok-type lacing needle. I had decided that I would do a 5-Part, 4-Bight Turk's Head so I turned to page 81 of Ron Edwards' book "How To Make Whips" and followed the diagrams as best I could. I should mention that I knew tying the turk's head would give me the greatest grief of any step of making this whip. I had only ever successfully tied one turk's head before and it was a MUCH simpler knot than the 5-part, 4-bight I was about to try. Ron Edwards' book is an excellent resource and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to make a whip but I really had a hard time following his diagrams for this knot! Anyway, I started and followed it the best I could but to no avail. It just didn't seem to be working. I almost gave up on it. Then I tried again and it still didn't seem right but then I started to spread out the strands and it slowly gave shape. Then I went around again following the path the first pass made and at that point it was actually starting to become quite a bit of fun. The knot actually turned out quite well. Now I'm looking forward to trying out more knots in the future! I ended up cutting off 35" of lace so I only used about 2' 2" to tie it. I measured the diameter of the knob from different angles and it was between 29 and 32 mm. I wasn't sure initially how wide to make my laces but I came fairly close to having made the right choice at 5mm because, with 2 passes, the knot was tied very close together with only very minimal gaps at some of the intersections. Where there was a very slight gap I took a black marker and colored the waxed thread underneath to hide it a bit. HA! I wanted to place the smaller Turk's Head at the handle thong junction so I found the area where I changed my plaiting pattern from a checkerboard to a herringbone and started wrapping waxed thread around it to build it up a bit. I wrapped about a 3/8" wide strip with it slightly raised in the center. Then I took a 5' 3" split, skived, and stretched piece of lace that was 5mm wide and, using the permalok needle, tied the 5-Part, 4-Bight Turk's Head on page 74 of Ron Edwards' "How To Make Whips" book. This one was a lot easier to follow and one pass was all I needed to tie it. After it was tied I ended up cutting off 4' 1" of lace so I only needed 1' 2" of lace to tie it. I think it would have looked a lot sharper if I had used thinner lace and done 2 passes instead of just one.       NOTES: The Finished Whip & Final Thoughts Sunday February 8, 2004 Step 20: After the knots had been tied I ROLLED them smooth. Then I tied on a Mike Murphy cracker, went outside and cracked the hell out of it. :) It worked great and gave a really-nice sounding CCRRAAACCKKKK!!! I'm really happy with how the whip turned out and it ended up exceeding my expectations. If things went well on this project I think it's because of 3 things. First, Bernie's tutorial DVDs were a HUGE help because it actually gave me a chance to SEE how a whip was made. These DVDs gave me the confidence to say to myself that I could probably make a whip if I really put forth the effort. The second thing that really helped me was a good library of books. Of these I found Ron Edwards' "How To Make Whips" to be the most useful. Before starting each step of this project I had a fairly clear idea of what I needed to do and how I was going to do it. The last, but not least, thing that was a tremendous help to me was a handful of whipmakers from the whipmakers list who took the time to offer suggestions or encouragement along the way. They're a big part of the reason why this whip turned out so well. Thank you.       [The second picture is super-duper High-Res so you can get a really close look] NOTES: Personal thoughts for next time.... Make sure to put the damn wrist strap on the right way! I have it rotated 90 degrees to how everyone else does it. HA! Next time I'll be sure to include the 4-plait belly. I'd also like to carry out the last bolster longer so that it's closer to the end of the whip ...giving it better weight distribution towards the end of the thong. I'd like to get the plaiting tighter and get a nice, tight, really dense-feeling whip. Also, on this whip at least, I wish I hadn't wrapped 6" on sinew at the handle/thong junction. That was a bit excessive. In the future I'd like to try cutting the laces in gangs and I'd like to be able to cut more of a taper in the laces so that I can get away for as long as possible without dropping strands.                             page 1   page 2   page 3   page 4   page 5   page 6   page 7