sos

Tandy's just put some of their standard white & edge paint on the clearance blow out at my local area last month. I grabbed one of each. Haven't opened - too busy doing MN renfest season.

Ok, so I've done a bunch of methods now ... From Ron Edwards, “How to make whips “ ... here after known as HTMW Just cutting a straight line across the hide - great, but limited by the quality and size of hide. Does not work well on soft hides like goat/kangaroo. Circling all strands simultaneously from the outside on pages 55-57. On strong hides (kangaroo or cow if full grain you had split or split yourself), this is amazing once you learn a few tricks. Circling with the thumb nail as a guide on page 58. Not recommended beginners until they have done a few with a hand held strander. Triangle for snake whips on page 99. A happy compromise between the circling methods & just cutting straight lines across large hides. Needs special attention paid to the 3 corners if you are not tracing it. Otherwise a sheetrock straight edge & a pair of divider (compass) will give you flawless lace with very little skill required. If you get a bit of skill, you can put the blade at an angle and bevel at the same time...I'm not quite able to do this one for long pulls or corners. Non Edwards: Circles from the inside I've also used the simple stranders from tandy's leather to work from the inside out...it gives up a 1 “x1 “ square of prime leather. Pretty reliable if the hide is strong. Don't bother with goat, unless you're really patient. Tracing a “U “ shape - My own style on a hide was to make a few marks on the back & do a mostly perfect cut with a sheet rock ruler. Extremely nice and for the short length I wanted awesome. This is really just a double length straight line cut. It's still faster than the triangle method and will allow you to utilize more of the hide. Straps into triangles - My own style again. This was the one I posted about above. The idea being if you have a perfect rectangle, then cutting from one corner to the opposite corner would create the perfect taper. You have to change the way you think about the measurements as the width you get out is the strap width, minus the minimum width you selected. Very easy to trace though! For me as beginner knowing where to cut, training the hand to be steady, recognizing the bad chunks of leather & dealing with it are horribly simply - but difficult to do in practice. I know so much more than I did last year. I'm still not good even. Have to graduate to using just a cut strands and do the beveling while cutting off the circle. My whips kind of look like junk to me, but I got called up to help talk about whips for a local thing last week!

Page 97 in the Ron Edward's "How to make whips" ... btw Joe, which edition do you have? I have the 2nd edition. I'm interested in hearing about the complicated cutting pattern Ron describes in the 1st edition book, but doesn't use in the 2nd.

Thanks a ton Joe! I also have some Ron Edward's books I've been scouring for blogs by leather workers & only found a few who do the whips so far, maybe 7 or 8...I want to see what goes on in people's heads - in that aspect the paracord community seems to be far more active - especially on youtube!

I saw them last year on here ... http://www.apwa.org.au/join-apwa.html, but then found this page too http://www.australianwhipcracking.org/Full_Join_AWPA.htm & couldn't justify paying that amount of money versus a good book with complete walk through or amazon prime for business shipping etc. Some questions I had that would help me with deciding if I'm joining their particular group ... How do you like them? Are there any difference between standard leather work forums with braiding or whip sections? (beyond more people for just whips) What's their forum post count per month/week/day like? Do they have electronic release's of the journal? Do they have an archive of their previous journals available? If so, does it cost extra?

I thought I replied to this one the other day - but thanks a ton for all the info and the wonderful inspiration! I saved this as a project - it's in my top 10 even above some of the relative's stuff who I don't expect to pay me much or see till xmas

Care to share?

Is anyone a member of the whipmaker's guild?

I'm not to the point where I've cut into my kangaroo yet - I got my hands on some super cheap goat hides and have been slicing from them...so I haven't used the circle pattern proscribed in 2nd edition of Ron Edward's book. The taper and the strength of the hides seems to be the issue. I don't have the super grade lace cutter / beveler / splitter @ $100-300 a shot, so me and my aussie strander are looking for ways to ensure the taper. I've done some general circles from the inside out and some others from outside in and been displeased with the lack of even lace. I've scaled back to 3' snake whips primarily till I can work out the triangle method of cutting recommended for snake whips by Ron Edward. I'll definitely update, I've got 7 projects before I'm redoing the taper on a belly & working the renaissance festival weekends for another month - so time at the work bench is limited. Edit: I do cow for most of my whips, but the goat hide is the same size/shape as kangaroo that's I've got & that's why I'm doing a test in that

One of my girlfriends had to show me her 12 strand cotton string flat braiding before I got some of the designs & I still can't quite pull them in leather. My suggestion is watch youtube video's....pick the 5 best; watch, pause, rewind, repeat. Wish I had links to the ones I used to watch for you & I can't find the one I saved of how to take an ending and wrap it around a d-ring securely. It's frustrating because, at one point on pinterest I thought to myself, "Saving this ... will need it eventually!"

Acceptable...what did you use to polish that antler? I have access to a wood lathe and deer antler pretty regularly...any chance you'd shed some light on the process for such a beautiful piece's process of creation?

Is Bruce Grant dead?

Hey guys, I gave in and bought a whip making book, read Ron Edward's "how to make whips" three times now front to back & another 5 hours just pondering the pages out of order. I've got a quirt from Grant's book I made too, but he has to be the most vague maker of whips to bother writing a book...though to be fair, I was told Grant didn't write books, someone else cobbled them together, especially after he died. Back to the point... On page 14 & 15 of the 2nd edition, Edward's goes into some pattern methods. I was pondering this and thought to myself, why doesn't he cut the strands by making rectangles and cutting across the diagonal of one corner to the opposite corner? See attached image. Everyone I've talked too said that there hasn't been much change in whips for a few hundred years unless you count the past 15 years where the paracord whips have caught up to leather whips for cracking. So, I'm asking what the reason people don't use the diagonal method is... I'll take any other musing's people have too! I haven't decided if it's worth joining the whip maker's guild yet - otherwise I'd ping them. Thanks for the help in advance!! -M

5 & 1/4" long or 51.4"? Very cool though...would these be available for sale at some point? I don't buy decorative tools, but I use so much fid & that's pretty damn amazing!

Exactly why I used the word "vaguely" it gives the person the option of similar things.

It's also vaguely a mystery braid - hugely popular thing...

They have someone online pretty frequently - I get chat messages coming up from him or his minion/hench person. I'm playing around with the idea of a heavier industrial sewing machine from them.

It does somewhat, but brings up a new question ... when you say you back braided it - I'm guessing you mean when replacing the strand. Versus; that you worked up the core to the handle, then worked down from the handle to cover the core?

I've only done a few leather whips & hadn't read or bought the books yet - but can testify to different materials causing, ... "oddities". I mixed some upholstery leather for colors on a quick & dirty test, supple little thing & very sleak. I used lamp chain, artificial sinew to attach the lamp chain to a solid set of 3 tannery done oil die 2mm x 2mm pieces. Then did a layer of veggie tan cow ~2-3oz for the belly. Then layered on black zora & a white upholstry leather to get my exterior. What I'm saying here is that I commit a whole slew of sins, so who knows exactly where my errors caused the worst problems. On the throw it collapses on the rolling loop just before the crack at an uneven rate...sometimes spectacularly so, my little 3' body and 4' with tail+popper ended up deafing myself & some guests one night in the basement when I told one whip cracker to just power through the loop as it didn't handle like a traditional throw. At rest it exhibited some pull in one direction, curling significantly ... when I took it apart again, I find my artificial sinew had bunched around the ending constrictor knot I did on the core - perhaps I used too much sinew and some of it slip off the other pieces as we cracked it. I don't have pictures for it, should have though ... especially when I started dissecting it!

I tried learning off this examples awhile back - I found these instructions to be far easier to follow for a 6 bight (which should be harder right?) ... didn't even need a guiding mandel tool (spelling).