Topic: My first really, really bad whip - story and pictures
Hello everybody
I am writing this post only to show you how I nearly got tied of whip-cracking before I started – just because I believed in a nice homepage and some “expert” explanations about length, size of heel knot and so on.
This post is meant to be a warning to everyone who is going to by his or hers first whip without any knowledge and absolutely not to take any whipmaker into the pillory (even though I sometimes wanted that).
When I was searching around on many, many homepages I was only looking for a whip made out of roo hide and made by a man (!!!!! I know better now) - for a reasonable price. I knew that eBay was NOT the place to buy a whip, but I found a place with video reviews, family history, distinction from the local community, so I found that this guy had to be an honest expert with a high degree of integrity.
I ordered a 6 ft, 12 plait as my first whip. This whip cost me nearly 400 EUR ~ 470 USD and it showed up to be a piece of sh.. . The whip had absolutely no transition and could not roll out at all. When it arrived it was folded with three rubber bands to hold it together in a flat round parcel. I did not manage to make two cracks in a “row” because the whip was “dead” .
Do I need to say, that the whipmaker never responded, when I contacted him!
Finally, I gave up and ordered a very, very fine new 6 ft. Roo from a whipmaker (I have met him in real life), which I now consider as a very good friend. Now everything I tried to do just happens and within few days I could start learning again.
In the autum, I bought a very special nylon whip from a female whipmaker, and with that beautiful whip, everything succeeds.
So my lesson was: male or female – buy your whips from whipmakers with integrity and whipmakers who are proud of their work.
Here it comes: data and photos of my first bad whip:
INTERNAL CONSTRUCTION
HANDLE: Flexible Teflon bar 30cm long
CORE: At the point of the handle starts a first real core:
A yellow plastic tube full of wire30 cm long.
At the end of the yellow core starts a tapered red hide filler 48 cm long.
Two strands of thick (2 mm) tapered leather long 108 cm and 98 cm, binded togheter to 58cm from the butt, are wrapped over the handle (starting from the butt) and these two thick strands wraps the handle and the plastic core.
OVERLAY
OVERLAY LENGTH: cm 170
PLAIT: 12 plt in herringbone pattern
KNOTS: Spanish ring style one over the butt and two knots over the handle at 15 and 22cm
The first 107 cm of the overlay are plaited in 8 plt and the last 63 cm of the overlay are plaited in 6 plt.
HANDLE: Flexible Teflon cm 30 long
WIDE FALL: cm 62 ( from 12mm to 3 mm)
SYNTHETIC CRACKER: cm 37
TOTAL LENGTH (from the butt to the end of the cracker): CM 273
DROPPING
FIRST DROPPING: from 12 to 10 plait at 40 cm from the butt and from the point of the stands are dropped the the two strands goes down into the core for 73 and 30 cm.
SECOND DROPPING: from 10 to 8 plait at 84 cm and from the point of the stands are dropped the the two strands goes down into the core for 40 and 16 cm.
THIRD DROPPING: from 8 to 6 plait at 108 cm from and from the point of the stands are dropped the two strands goes down into the core for 63 cm.
You can see the pic's here:
