The "Making of" Gallery - Ben Varsek

[Rachel McCollough]

Very beautiful! Ben, excellent work!

[Ron May]

Ben, you're a total straight plaiting machine.
Very nice.

Ron

[Mark Elliott]

Looks really sharp, Ben.

[Ethan Mitchell]

Wow, that is so small! Very nice work so far Ben!

[Wolfgang Timm]

Ben this really looks super-precise! I especially like the last photo with the curve of the whip.

[Sven van Leeuwen]

That's looking very good Ben. And very straight.

Sven

[Robert Gage]

Ben, that's coming along very nicely! And I too like 6 and 1/2 foot bullwhips very much....

[Ben Varsek]

Thank all of you very much!

I'm done plaiting the third (final) belly (20 plait).
The overlay of this whip will be all black. I still haven't decided what pattern(s) I'm going to be using to cover the handle as well as what knots I'll be using.
I'll make the knots out of 550 paracord since making them out of wave lace will probably just as difficult as making them out of Dacron (I used to make several Dacron heel knots for a friend of mine a couple of years ago - never again).



All the best
Ben

[Ron May]

Very boring Ben. Nothing but straight seams to look at.

Your plaiting is as precise as ever. Well done.

Ron

[Rachel McCollough]

Absolutely beautiful straight seams!

[Robert Gage]

Quite! Well done, Ben!

[Jyri Haveri]

Awesome!

[Mark Elliott]

Sweet! Very nice looking so far, Ben. I am so impressed at how precise your work is.

[Ben Varsek]

Thank y'all very much !

I'm currently working on the overlay and I'll post pictures as soon as I'm done with it!

All the best
Ben

[Flemming Bo Christiansen]

Thanks Ben. I wondered what the secret was, but it makes sence to sew or bind it.

Thanks

[Andrew Van Werkhoven]

I am seriously jealous of how straight your seams are, that is some serious attention to detail there. If that's what the belly looks like, I cannot wait to see the Overlay!

[Robert Gage]

Andrew, I've got one of Ben's whips in my collection. The overlay is astonishing - as is the whole whip!

[Scott A. Cary]

Excellent work, Ben. It loos great!

[Ben Varsek]

Flemming, sewing the ends is not my idea - credit goes to Rachel!

Thank you very much Andrew, Robert and Scott!

I'm done with the overlay, only the knots are missing. I'll post pictures as soon as I'm done with the knots!

All the best
Ben

[Ben Varsek]

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