Friday, June 11, 2010

Father's Day Whips

I just finished a pair of whips in time for a friend to give them to her husband for Father's Day.  He's seen me out cracking my whips and thinks it looks like fun.  Now I guess there'll be at least two whip-geeks in the neighborhood.

This whip is a 6 foot 12 Plait Bullwhip in all black.  I recently changed how I load the core of my whips - having moved from the beaded chain to using bb's.  I really like the little bit of extra weight and the smoothness of the the whip's flow.


The second whip is one of my 3 foot Pocket Rattlers (snakewhip) in black and colonial blue.  I gotta say that I really like this color of blue - unfortunately my pictures don't do it justice.





Well, that's all for now.  Take care and happy cracking!

~Ryan


Saturday, June 5, 2010

Pair of Mini Bullwhips

One of the types of nylon whips I make are what I call "Snapdragons."  These are very tiny whips, and usually they are snakewhips.  The pair of whips below were a special order.  He asked for a pair of black and white Snapdragons with 6 inch handles and extending the length of the whips to 28 inches (from butt to end of fall). 

Snapdragons are made differently than my other whips.  These whips have a loaded core followed by an eight-plait-overlay.  My other whips have a loaded core, an eight-plait-belly, and then a twelve-plait-overlay.  The lack of a plaited belly in the Snapdragons makes them quite slim in diameter.  These little guys definitely don't take up much space.

Also on these particular Snapdragons I made the falls a bit longer so that the customer could shorten the length if he so desired.  I took them out for a few test cracks and they performed quite well.

Typically, my other Snapdragons look like this:

Take care and happy cracking,

~Ryan