The "Making of" Gallery - Ben Varsek (Page 2 of 5)

First of all, I want to apologize for not having posted anything in this gallery for such a long period time.

Since I've announced that I'll post more pictures of my very first Wave Lace whip, I will start with that:

Due to the thong of the whip being very nose heavy, I wanted to counterbalance the whip, by adding the appropriate amount of weight to the heel Knot. The whip has 2 chrome ferrules on the handle and I wanted to have something resemblant in the heel kont. Threrefore I've decided to use a 4mm wide stainless steel disc for the heel knot.

I couldn't find a mirror polished disc in the measurements that I needed online and therefore tryed to ploish one myself by hand. I worked my way up from one grit to another - going for a finer grit after each step. The following picture shows the disc a couple of "steps", before I've reached the 1200 "grit-step":

The final result was not shiny enough for my taste. Fortunatly, a very, very friendly knifemaker near my hometown (Jürgen Schanz) offered me to help me out with this one. He ran the "pre-sanded" disc over his poilshing wheel and in a matter of seconds - the disc looked the way I wanted it to be.

The following picture shows a comparison between the disc in it's original look (240 grit) and the mirror polished version. Please excuse the dust on the mirror polished one:

At first, I've tryed out how it would look if the heel knot would cover the steel disc as little as possible,

but in the end, I prefferd the look of the heel knot covering more surface of the steel disc:

Even tough this whip has 3 bellies and a 24 plait overlay, the diameter of the handle is still very thin. To provide for a better grip/controll of the whip, I've added a ferrule and a second heel knot. A certain legend told me about the advantages of using 2 knots for a better cotroll and about the asthetic benefits of using ferrules - Thank you very much Robby! This lower heel knot ferrule is fixed to the handle with epoxy glue, to insure that it doesn't move during use.

Those pictures show the second heel knot in progress:

And here is the finished heel knot:

Here is a picture of the entire 6,5 foot whip. I doesn't show well in this picture, but the end of the 6 palit thong is only a tiny fraction lager in diameter than the loaded fall. The fall hitch and the fall are the only parts of this whip that got waxed, I will be experimenting with waxing  entire Wave Lace whips in the future though.

All the best
Ben