How to Make a Single Belly Nylon Bullwhip with Adam Winrich

hey everyone its Nick with the whip shop I'm here in the shop with Adam winrich and today we're going to be building a nylon bullwhip with one belly [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is my basic collection of tools I use for whip making got a couple different fits forceps and lighters and scissors sometimes you need a pliers or someone measure stuff and then these artificial sinew for the binding sometimes use a little bit of dreaded electrical tape and then a hammer and some staples for securing my knot foundation and then a little craft knife for cutting off the end of the whip so to start out this whip I got a 11 inch handle that's just sort of ran anywhere between 8 inches and 12 inches is usually good and then I made myself a little paracord loop right here and all my core strands Bally strands and overlay strands really go through that and this is how I'm gonna like hold the whip to the wall is gonna go over a hook and I was braid everything off of that so the cut on some core strands this is gonna be a 6-foot rip so my core strands are basically gonna be 3-foot from here to the end I'm gonna cut five strands that'll be doubled over so that means let's see one side basically this first one I'll cut about six foot I guess I see there's three foots over make it a little bit more gonna be safe so I mentioned what I'm cutting all of this stuff out I'm not gonna be like super precise usually with the parachute cord I mean it's not that expensive so I'm always gonna kind of cut it longer than it needs to be just it's something with whip making whereas once you've done a design like I don't know 20 times or something you can and you keep a notebook you could probably get that design really dialed in so that way you know exactly how to make everything in minute the amount of waste you're gonna have but that in itself is its own kind of headache having things just barely long enough so I kind of like avoiding that headache especially since I only make whips now as a hobby notice I cut out five strands so now these are all gonna get looped through this loop and then I'm gonna use artificial sinew to bind them up so that April Choi's probably the only the person has seen using feet in the process of whip making and I don't know how or when I started doing this but I mean there kitty so I just take my role artificial sinew unspool so I'm put in between my toes and then put this on there and since this rod is about 5/16 of an inch that means that these strands so when it's doubled over it's five strands doubled over means I've got ten strands over this rod so that that covers it pretty well if you were using a thinner piece of rod it'd be easier to use fewer strands so if I went down to say 1/4 an inch for the handle then I would probably use only four strands doubled over to have eight strands over the handle yeah so now I'm just so you see I hold firmly my feet and if I really want extra finding I can put my hands on my knees and just go push up with my feet and kind of use my calves so that means I can get a tighter binding and pretty much in sort of the handle transition construction this is about the only part I'm gonna be doing a whole lot of binding I'm not gonna do any extra binding like over the belly all right so I get to the end here I'm gonna hitch it off and you see if I so there's a couple different options you could I've made whips different ways so we could just keep binding and let the core only be this big but these 10 strands obviously aren't gonna be as big as like ten strands with this big chunk of steel in there so I'm just going to add in a few little scraps of paracord I think we'll go with four of them that I'm gonna then trim off and then these will be the sort of determine the start of the taper right off the handle so I'm just gonna double it over and kind of bind this on right at the end and sometimes you can do you just add like three or four I'm gonna add four sometimes I had five really depends how much weight you want at the end of the handle and then let's do that [Music] there they're so those little filler strands are on there and now I'm just gonna come off the end of the steel a little bit like this just do a little bit of a light binding down that's maybe like I don't know inch and a half or something and then come back not really putting any tension on it here and then just put in a little extra binding just to build up the diameter right here and at the transition kind of smooths that out and then come back on the handle and then let's do a couple hitches to hold that in place and then I can cut this off and then I'll trim the rest of this now basically I'm it's gonna give this thing a haircut so what I want with these all these filler strands is I actually want these to taper out pretty quickly so I'm just going around and I'm only leaving maybe like oh no 3/8 of an inch or so in between them I don't want them to stick too far down in the whip because it'll be like too much weight let's go back with that one longer and this last one there and then now I'm gonna start cutting out the strands with the core left in and then again these I also kind of want to have taper out a little bit faster at the beginning let's do that one there those really drop off yeah they do is just sort of meant as as a filler and usually with a heavier handle bullwhip like this won't be kind of a chunkier handle you want to taper off faster so I'm not gonna carry them out very far inch I'm going to cut out one more and then I'll get out my measuring tape and see how long the longest one has to be which I want it to be three feet from right there yeah see one of these about three foot yeah about this one and I'll kind of work backwards okay the transition so I'll sort of go through and do like a little preliminary trimming up on this and then once I've done that I can go back through and look at the shape and see how I want to adjust it kind of the idea with most bullwhips is you wanted to taper faster off the handle and then the taper will get slower and slower as you go down so looking at it now I might be still a little bit too chunky out here so I think I'm going to bring these ones back a bit more so that way I have less weight and a slower taper this one there there that's not too bad now I'm ready to cut some belly strands so that's gonna be 12 plant so I'll need to cut six strands ballpark this would be maybe the shortest one so the the finished braid is going to be three foot six and I'm also going to have some tails sticking out at the end of that four um to work with the taper so that kind of a general rule of thumb for how long you cut strands with leather is you cut it one and a half times the finished length so say if I was gonna braid three foot I would need to cut four and a half foot of length to be able to get that whole thing braided but the leather has stretched to it and you plant it super tight and or tighter than paracord usually in the thong so I'm not gonna get as much stretch that way so what I'm gonna do with this stuff newbee paracord you cut it one and three-quarters the length that you want to finish the braid to be and because I also want the tails sticking out the end that means probably my longest strands here which I probably will end up cutting just way too long anyway or actually gonna be twice the finished length so finished length is three foot six sounds like that seven foot so probably my longest strand here is gonna be 14 feet for the belly is three there now I need to get the core out of all of these guys you can save yourself time and some of your whip making if you buy parachute cord without the core in it but there is a difference between the two of them and I guess sometimes I like using it with the core in and then taking the core out and sometimes I'm rather just use stuff with the core that's already in these will go through my loop and you're just going to the halfway point of all of those strands that yeah so this start I'm gonna do a 12 plant start and this is basically how the same way that I would start like a performance hybrid style thong or a cow whip thong I would still have strands going through this strand here would be the one that like ties your thong into the handle and if you watch so I put three strands on one side three strands on the other and then half of them you see you're kinda in the front and the other half cut in the back so I'm just basically bringing all the strands are all the back parts to the front one at a time so I'm gonna bring start on the right side and go all the way over everything the time now it's a twelve strand braid so I want to develop and under three over three pattern so I've got one two three strands here so this next one on the top I'm actually to go under and then over three like that and on the same mines here I'm gonna work with my next strand this is the one that was in the middle so I'm going to go under one and then over the three that are not on the front and this other side make sure I grab the one that's in the back there that's my middle strand and I'm going under two over three and I guess other one in the back now I'm going under two over three and then finally the last one I'm gonna actually going under three over three and that's the start and now I'm set up to start a regular twelve strand braid so cuz this is the handle I'm gonna braid the handle about as tight as I can because on a bullwhip the handle is the one thing you don't want to have shift on you so that's why the handle will get braided tight and then when I get into actually braiding off the handle that part the wax will actually tighten up the whip sufficiently so that I don't want to braid that tight I'll actually just lay those strands pretty much in place and just keep the braiding neat so I'm getting towards the end of the handle so you're gonna you'll notice like so now what I'm really pulling on it like I reach I'll grab it I'm locking it over this finger most of the abrasion or tension is to be really on my pinkie there and I might pull it next to my chest and really pull it tight and you'll see it slip right there and that's kind of indication of like how tight and pulling stuff that's the other it pull it in there tight so this is firm and it won't twist or loosen up but as I get off the transition I'm gonna stop doing that and I'm just gonna go into like regular song planning mode and you'll see that I'll be all of a sudden the not working nearly as hard getting the strands tight some people may say that a nylon whip will break in if it's too stiff but actually nylon only gets stiffer with age but the only part that you can see break down on some people's whips is this transition point right here and if you were all braiding it'd be very easy for this braiding to slip off the end of the handle like if this was a braided core you could slip off and then this gets all wobbly but because these strands run straight from here all the way to there there's nothing that can that's gonna slip off it's just that's just solid braided paracord right there so there's nothing to slip which says why I think this is a they better than trying to do a whip where all of the layers are braided so it's just a lightly chunkier up here so I'm doing more to push my strands up so I don't have any gaps you're just about off yeah almost I'm still gonna want to make sure my strands that are up here are still um pulled in tight gotcha and this you see we end up with a little bit of a lump right here and that part of that will roll out and the other part gets covered by the little transition that will put on there so you see I'm saying where it's tightening up I know I'm still on the steel right there so I'm still making sure that I get some see some slippage up there it's one way to gauge your tightness of your platting is to see how much of the strand slips right up there so now you can see like this basically there now the tightness of the strands that is off the steel so now I can back off on my tension and you can see now where I'm planning when I grab the Strand I'm just grabbing it just between my thumb and forefinger I'm not like going around and grabbing it like this I'm just grabbing it just in between my fingers and maybe tugging on a little bit but I'm more interested in putting the Strand in place neatly then I am Sam just grabbing it like there and then really checking the back to make sure I don't need gaps and put it in place and make sure it's neat but it's not I'm not pulling on it ridiculously tight so you're about an inch off the steel before you start backing off is that correct no I am right off this the steel or I guess where I'm platting is an inch off the steel but because I was pulling in the strands tight so my planning might have been here like where my thumb is here but um where I was pulling on it it's tightening up in there I gotcha so I'm still in my 12 plant and as I break down this sofa sort of gonna eyeball it as to where it'd be good spots to drop strands and when I drop the strands I'm just gonna leave them sticking out and then when I'm done braiding I'll trim them off and fuse them because they're just gonna be on the inside of the width there's no need to go through the trouble of trying to do a neat strand drop drop in the inside maybe the same thing so if you ever find it difficult to kind of determine what strand is what since you're working with those those tails in the middle those those independent strands not in this instance because they all have the core inside gotcha of them so they feel a bit different son I'm not having any trouble usually if it's in other whips I make say like um 275 quart stock whip or something there my course strands I will have taken the core out and usually where I get a mixed up is in these like same lower strands here that I'm gonna go over because he said pushing him in I'm pinching him together and then I'm bringing the Strand around and then usually when I would come back to pull him back up to even out my braid or whatever cinch it up then it's real easy to like to grab one of those core strands back so yeah in this case it's not frustrating but in doing it with 275 corridor even with Dacron that can get frustrating gotcha so this point you are just laying those things in place with not much tension at all then yep you can see pretty much the most tension you see I put in is really when I'm bringing it around and I sort of pitch everything up but I'm not even pulling and I'm just sort of giving a little shake so I'm ready to drop one so normal dropping situations you'd probably drop like one of these two strands you you tuck it in and then keep braiding but because these are just going to get burned off it's just I'm going to one of the short strands at the top so to kind of get it out of the way I'm just going to kind of hitch it up there it's not necessary but it keeps it out of the way and then I'll keep on braiding and now my pattern will switch to from under three over three to under two over two and then then I'll bring a little bit more and see where my other shorty is and then that one will also get placed up and out of the pattern now you can also sort of adjust the shape and weight of the width as you're braiding if you carry your braiding out like a little bit further or your 12 tight a little bit further will be heavier if you drop sooner I just stick this one out of the way so now I'm just into my ten plat and I'm just doing under two over three on both sides almost ready to start dropping from ten to eight so I see at some point on this side here I'm gonna drop on my left side first I'm gonna switch to it's the under three over two because that's what it'll be after that strand comes up yeah this one pops out there instead of over there there and now I got the four strands on my left side nice brain little bits drop another one and be down to eight plant basically what I changed it is for whatever reason this is my drop strand I still want that to go under three so when I switched to AC under three over to there I just wanted to make sure that I was this one is still going under three and you see the one right below it is only going under two strands just uh I know it probably but it gives a little bit more of like an anchor I think that once I fuse it it would have to like for it to ever come undone would have to come out from underneath three strands instead of four or instead of two but um honestly it's in the belly so nothing in the belly is like four strand drops is never gonna come undone anyway but it would be possible like say if I rolled it like too vigorously and the whip flopped around a lot that a few strand could have a chance to come undone so now the eight plat is gonna go down a ways and I'll drop another strand once I have two strands in the core and then when I'm down to one strand in the core I'll drop down to six and then I will be at then I'll do six flat five plat for plant for the little six inch section that sticks out past the core I don't even tell see I wash it together with my fingers but once we wax that that's then gonna take up all the air pockets and tighten everything now so now I'm gonna braid down about you saw my lasts my third to last strand ended about there so I'm gonna braid to about here and then I'll drop out of strand and then like I was want to get past y'all drop out the next strand so I'm kind of spacing out where my drops happen and where my course strands end it's my shorty is this one alright I'll wait till that one's back at the top and then I'm just going to keep it under 1 / 2 so now I'm just seven strands see what my next short one is it's up there no I'm just down to six and there's different ways to do a six strand braid usually in leather whips each side will be different usually on leather whips one side would be under two over one and the other side would be under one over two however whatever reason like doing it in paracord always if you do it that way it kind of ends up like oddly oval which doesn't seem to sit well with the whip so it's why usually in nylon I'm keeping both sides the same in this case I'm doing under one over two on both sides and that somehow makes it more like a triangle now I'm off the core so I want this I'm gonna a little part to be a total of six inches long so I'm going to do my six plat here for two inches and then drop out a strand do five strands for two inches and then four strands for two inches and you can see it gets kind of bunched up here this is not the most not the neatest platting and it's in the core or the in the inside of the whip so it doesn't have to be terribly neat short- that one yes one goes up there now I'm down to two streams and that's I'm yes it's thinking sometimes you'll ask somebody who's a bit older a question about how to do something and oftentimes you won't get the answer I think like what are the reasons you don't get the answer and from my own personal experience now having done this for a while playing Telus sometimes I personally will respond better if someone has already shown me that they've made an effort and tried to do something if they just flat-out haven't done any effort and want me to give them all the information then I'm just likely to just blow them off like man you didn't try it but if someone made an honest effort first then I own I want to help them see how far they got it's very easy to correct what they've already done and be inspired to help them so now I'm gonna just sort of hold this end part in place with a little wrap of electrical tape that will come out as I braid the overlay just do a little a couple little wraps that's just um holding it in place like that there and now and go back and trim all these off so I'm gonna leave a little bit sticking out so I can burn them save these scraps for future projects these ones so I'm gonna cut one off right where the four plat ends and then see you next month at two inches I think I can do one more it another two inches let's take a lighter and fuse those if you want to have a cool lighter what you got to do let's go to a jewelry shop in Arizona or New Mexico and you get a genuine you know silver or nickel turquoise inlaid lighter cover this if you want to be cool class it up and not just a whip color so you can see the shape of the whip here that's our thickest point and how quickly it tapers off and then as we go the taper gets more and more gradual that's pretty much what you want with a bullwhip if we carry this weight out too far the whip is just going to be really chunky and tiring on the arm ideally what we want is a whip that does the work for you give this guy I mean they roll this transition part that'll smooth down just a hair that's probably sometimes I think not entirely necessary to roll the belly I mean it's gonna get covered anyway yeah but um it's a nice habit to get into and see I also see you can see how much I can twist that but like I said it's all gonna tighten up in the wax so cut out all the overlay strands and it's gonna be a 16 flat whip so I cut out eight strands for them or cut 22 feet and then doubled them back over and then we've got a 10 foot 12 foot 15 foot and a 17 foot and they're all like sort of middled right there so I've got 11 foot of strands sticking out on either side does that make sure I should at least be able to get a 6 foot whip out of this and now I'm gonna do my basic start first and is the same way that I started my 12 strand braid I'm gonna start on the right side go over 4 and then I'm gonna go under 1 over 4 I'm always working from the top down and from the back forward and under 1 over 4 and then under 2 over 4 and get them then under - over for this other side here and now or - now we're under three over four to three over four and under four over four so that's a 16 strand start and now I'm just gonna do a little bit of regular under four over four braiding to get up onto the steel of the handle and then I usually like putting patterns in the handles even if it's a one color it just the changing of the textures is kind of pleasing and also part of my I guess interest in whips is always in in the pattern work so I like being able to incorporate pattern work myself it's not I'm basically up on the steel and I'm gonna switch to an under one over one pattern or I kind of went left these three up top there no I'm gonna do this which sort of gradually so what I'm doing with my finger I'm not sure if that's what anybody else does but so I got this pointer finger here it will want to do in pattern work I will lay down the strands I want to go over and then I'll put them hold them down with the finger from the opposite side so now I really am going under one over one under one over one under one over one under one over one so you can see I'm holding them all down and now I can just reach through here and call that one tight and then bring my strand through and then just it sort of cinch everything up now single diamond is a really tough pattern to braid and keep straight I am NOT an expert at it but you can kind of when you're braiding along you can look at each pair of diamonds so like this won't just want this one like that and try to sort of fuss with it a little bit to try to keep them straight as you go down so now you'll see I'll do that same thing on this side this handles going to have some diamond platting in it and then I'll switch to a gaucho braid for the middle and then I'll do regular braid for the last third of the handle and then that regular braid will continue off the handle now suppose it was me looking at the work of Tony Nugent that made me see that you could do like a patterned handle in one color and incorporate the a regular braid pattern of you know like this is 16 plants so the regular pattern is under 4 / 4 without looking at his work that you could incorporate that regular braided pattern into other pattern work and have it still look like something or it looks different cuz I used to think no pattern work that's only my single diamond double diamond your sort of wedding bands or Gaucho weave the regular braided pattern has no place in panin work but if you set it off with other patterns then it does have its own look to it so again this handle you can see like I'm going through here I'm futzing with every strand trying to pull them all in and make sure there are no gaps so that's probably the thing is with diamond platting is the most time-consuming because you have the most overs and unders of anything so it that makes it more solid as a pattern and that's why it's often used in whip handles because it's structurally very sound but also time-consuming now I've read about that much single diamond not real I'm just sort of eyeballing it and now I'm gonna switch to wedding bands and I'm gonna do two bands that are four wide or four strands wide and then two that are nine strands wide and then back to two that are four so it's sort of like a skinny fat it's getting kind of a pattern type thing so my first ones are gonna angle to the right so you are under one over one pattern but at the end you just go under two like that then I'll do the other side go under one over one under one over one under one and now over three and then since those in place yeah we do the other side go under one over one under one over one and then under four and in tanks no under one over one under one over four under one so that last under one will start my next band that angles the other way under 1 over 1 under 4 over 2 under 1 over 4 under 3 go there for over for I wish I knew an easy way to explain how to keep track of this in a person's head I sort of visualize it as if it were on graph paper or basically think of each one of these bands going across is like a Tetris chunk that's that's four things wide or four blocks or diamonds wide so I just know that with my pattern I'm just creating blocks of Tetris chunks that are four wide I'm doing there and then it's the top and bottom that'll kind of change but I'm mainly focused on this one part is always going to be over four and that's why the other part is like well not even over four now under three it's a to be weird to keep track of but that's sort of how I think of it so it's not that tough so now I'm going over four under four over one and then this over one here that's the start of my nine wide band going under to over for under two then I'll go over for under for over 3 so I guess the other thing to think of as you see how these strands come out there was there was like one strand in between them so this one comes out here this one is over the next strand so the next strand so you just keep basically following that kind of pattern you don't want two of them coming out from underneath of the same strand you'll end up with a double up over four under four and now go under three over five goes over to under six you can sort of see once you've get away from the single diamond where there's a lot of three where there are fewer overs and unders it's goes a bit faster now we'll go under one over seven and then we're going under eight over here see I'm always trying to keep my pattern pushing it up putting strands in place and now I'm gonna go some base I'm going over this one so essentially I'm going over nine strands you can see I'm using my fingers to try to keep my strands in place and up flying all over the place and now this next one you can finally this is like the sketchiest part of it because I've gone over so many it's hard to keep that straight that's why using my hands to keep a strip mall so sometimes you'll tidy up the under part bit so that's not old Toongabbie and now I should go I've already gone under to here so I'm basic going under 7 over 1 and now I can start the band that's angling in the other direction and that sort of helps a lot now it's kind of locked in place so it's fat so generally a patterns faster to put in like this a lot a real wide band because there aren't a whole lot of overs and unders but also structurally it's not very sound so that's why bands like this you can put in the middle of a solid handle but you would not put it where the grip is and you would not put it anywhere in the thong because it's too loose it's too susceptible to getting pushed aside and getting floppy and and loosening up let's see here I think here so I'm gonna go under four over four it kind of if you get lost in this part and you forget which side you're on it doesn't really matter as long as you know what the pattern is supposed to be or what it's supposed to look like I guess so now I'm going under over three under five I don't know yeah over 300 notice how the numbers always add up to 8 because it's 16 plant now under 2 over 6 and then this will be over 1 under seven and then this last one is just gonna be over eight and then so it's already gone under one so I'm gonna go I think I go under all eight yeah oh eight cuz I wanted that to be a a nine wide band it's the next one will go basically it's already gonna go over to automatically so if my loose strands is going over seven and under one and now I'm going under six over two and this should be over five under three so yeah that's one thing with pattern work I'm always like turn it around checking it make sure it's doing what I want to do make sure it's not gapping out now I go under 4 over 4 then over 3 under 4 over 1 there's no I'm on the other side of my say I did over 4 and that's over 4 this one's over 9 this one's over 9 so now I'm doing 4 & 4 again it's under 2 over 4 under 2 then over 1 under 4 over 3 I finally lock down this is the last guy here screws things out of the way it sounds gonna be you're gonna fit him in there this would be over for under four see this next guy here will be he's basically going under three over four under one it's basically over two under four over two under 1 over 4 under 3 so with this under for under four I mean I'm getting close to completing this other sort of for wide band was the the second one there and so now I'm gonna keep going doing my overs and I want to get a little bit away from the bands and then I'm gonna do a transition into the regular put a whip makers plat and this transition I believe I saw it on a pair of handles by Russell Schultz and I liked it see so I'm going over three under five under two over six it's not gonna do one more he's under so over one under seven and then so now I'm going to do this little transitioning thing so what I want to transition to is a regular whip makers plant so basically what I'm gonna want to have happen yes I will just want I want to go over these last four just like in a sixteen plant you go under four over four and but I only want one strand to stick out the back or I start about the side here and this is going to be sort of the start of the regular with makers plan so right here I'm going over three under one over four there so that one starts that pattern there and then this next guy it's gonna go basically yeah I'm pretty sure it sits under four over four and then we're gonna go over to under to over for so I guess conceptually you can think about it this way that you've got a bunch of strands that are always angling that are angling this way spiraling in one direction and at some point you want to bring out the strands that are going to be that are spiraling in the other direction in your normal plat so that's why you're gonna see that the front of this you're gonna see these strands angling this way and they're cut off by where i introduced but-- the part that crosses back the other way in the normal plan so it'll look the same on the front and the bank and over 1 under 3 over 4 and under 4 over 4 and this side now I'm getting just totally into under 4 over 4 I think that's I screw this up maybe I did so I did screw part of it up whereas I brought this one out too soon this one actually should go under everything so let me fix that just gonna peel these back a little bit there and take this strand and it's too lazy to attach a needle to it or anything as peeled back and shove it through there yeah it should have gone under those creases so the first one I should have brought out should have been on this side there yes that fixed that because what would happen if I would have kept going that same way I still have to bring this one around and I would have had a weird double up and and some of the stuff is easier to draw on graph paper and then it's a easier way to start visualizing it and then after a while some of the more basic patterns you don't have to see draw on the hunt anymore you can just do them there so I fixed that so that's the basically the end of the pattern work you can kind of see this is where your regular braid pattern starts and then it's just angling strands that kind of go into it so you're kind of cutting off the angle so I should have done this one should have come around first as far as when I was working the pattern but I tried to do this side first and that was kind of my mistake so you do that one first and then you worry about peeling this one up and then from here on out it's just regular braiding so now I'm coming to the transition I haven't gone over it yet but notice I'm doing my hard pulling technique but really looping it around the forefinger and really putting the pressure on my pinky and bring it to my chest and pull it tight but as I come off the the transition I'm gonna start easing back and it's maybe because I'm used to using stock whips I kind of like it when bull whips have a bit more break at the transition where they may be flat like a little bit where they don't hold like a perfect sort of curve coming off of it as that the whip for me anyway if it breaks more at the handle it throws more directly from the handle and I feel like I have more control of where it's going so you'll see as I keep going here I'm gonna change my tolling technique can also see on some of these strands I'll grab it let slide and wrap it and instead of like putting my pinky there I can also use my ring finger and let that take the tension so sometimes if you're doing a lot of tight braiding finger might be a little bit raw and you want to use some other finger but one thing about the transitions I say in this type of bullwhip particularly because the very core is solid strands of already braided paracord with the gut left in that I know that's not going anywhere so I don't need this transition to be braided super tight to make sure that the whip doesn't fall apart in a leather bullwhip you'd be really worried about the transition in some designs of whips that the whip would break down at the transition but that's with leather and paracord is already braided so it's already gonna be more durable than and more less likely to break down than leather because it's already braided so I can tell that's about right where the steel rod ends right there so you watch when I'm pulling on it there's a I'll do a little bit of slip that's I mean how much that strand there shifts and but not a whole lot and then once I know that I'm all the way past the transition I'm just gonna I probably know now I'm back to just holding the strands in between like my thumb and pointer finger and sort of making sure they're securely in place but I'm not putting a ton of tension on these it's what kind of tension are you pulling on those just a set in place how would you could what what other action was you prepared to so people can get an idea of just how um I don't know if you were like stacking together it's a bunch of matchsticks maybe I think I know it's uh maybe pushing together two Legos there you go trying to think of for me the attention to put on the thong it was a bit of a learning curve when I started because I worked with leather since I was a kid and I never thought about making paracord whips myself until I couldn't find anybody to make what I wanted and then when I started I thought oh you got a braid tight like um like leather so I braided it tight and they were just too tight and they were those whips were not functional or barely functional cuz I braided them too tight and the wax really tightened them up afterwards so I learned at home just ease up on the tension and then let the wax tighten up for you so that basically also means that like braiding this way it's a lot less strain on my hands good point so the whip cracks better and it's not that physically demanding to braid this way I'm gonna be pretty close to dropping my first strand and see where's my shorty so that's a shorter strand sticking out there yeah I can go ahead and drop that no I got a few more stitches to go before it gets dropped so one thing I usually do with these whips is once I've dropped a strand yes next then I'm gonna keep one strand running in the core because the drop strand is that one so he's gonna get tucked in there in the back and then peel up this one and now I'm under four over three this is what I'd call dropping out of the front my photo reason these strands here are the front I guess because that drop strands going to add a little bit to the sort of diameter the the bulk of the the cord is because paracord is kind of bulky so once it's in there it will mean this tapers off kind of fast so that sort of helps hide the amount of bulk that the drop strand adds but then I'll so I'll carry this strand at least down to my next drop and then when I drop I will cut it out of the core to make room for the new strand that's going into the core so that way there's no jump in or the diameter of the finished whip so right now you're just holding that drop string along the belly underside is it yeah I'm just trying to try to keep it there in the back gotcha and then my general rule of thumb as in this part of the whip is I like the drop strand to go at least three inches into the inside of the wafer be braided over at least three inches the general rule of thumb that's probably one of the things I would say with your planning that you want to I guess a Boyd would be having drop strands pull out because that's that's bad so I don't brave very tight but certain things like making sure the drop strands don't pull out like that something I will take care to avoid the what I mean the wax I think also helps the strands not pull out if if this this whip will be waxed if it were not going to be waxed I would probably want to carry my drop strands even further because paracord without the wax on it is kind of slick I'm gonna see where my other shortest strand here is well ready to do another drop so yeah so he's about there so when that's ready to in position to be dropped I'm gonna cut out the strand that's in the back right now and this idea of dropping one strand at a time it's like one of the many options for dropping strands there are many different ways to drop strands and you see this method used in cowhide bullwhips made by Leonard Wheatley and I would say the cowhide he was using is of a similar bulk or similar size as this parachute cord as far as like thickness and stuff so it makes sense that he would do a similar kind of dropping pattern because he's trying to keep the taper of his whip even and not have like lumps and stuff due to the drop strands this one's gonna get dropped right there and cut this guy out the back bit of scrap so as another note so we cut this strand 10 feet this first one that's getting dropped this one's getting dropped in here so you can see basically we've got at least about two feet extra here so this one's gonna go into the core and I'm gonna braid at least another three inches in 14 plat and we could go back with our design and we just keep track of how much we had to cut off and then subtract that from the original measurement so let's see we cut it 10 feet but if we have two feet of excess on each side we probably could have got by with a six-foot strand but I think I I think that if someone out there wants to go ahead and make like I don't know of ten of these probably buy the second one if you keep a notebook you will have all of the measurements down to the bare minimums and you can go on making the rest of your whips like that but for me I only make bull whips like this occasionally and because I do it as a hobby and as concerned with the waste I'd rather have everything be a little bit longer and then I can drop strands whenever I feel like as opposed to like the Strand being too short and then I have to go through the frustration of dropping before I wanted to I guess one thing you'll notice here this would be sold as a 16 plant bullwhip but the 16 plant only goes to about here like in the thong it's in the handle it serves well to do the patterns in the handle but then there's only maybe I was it like six inches or something of sixteen plant in song and I remember when I was younger as a whip maker I used to think like oh I'm selling this is a 16 Platt bullwhip there has to be as much 16 Platt as possible I think you've got a carry it way down the whip and it is possible to have that happen when you are tapering the strands like in a leather whip with tapered strands you can carry your strand count down further the body of the whip but I think after looking more like the work of Terry Jacko it's better to drop your strands a little bit sooner and have your the angle of your platting being just a little bit more to the angle or I guess that you don't want as steep of an angle you want like a a less steep angle of the planning so that way your coils like around there's more like coils I guess of the strands going around so it's that makes a whip that rolls out better as opposed to one that has like a bunch of bunched up strands and a very steep angle where's my next short one so this next drop it's coming pretty quickly and this one's gonna be different this one I'm gonna switch and drop out the back because I'm doing my 14 plat now and it's gonna be or it is under four over three and the next even number of strands to get to is twelve plant so I I'm gonna want to switch to from our switch from under four over three to under three over three I see some there is so this one's now it's not here and so I use all the way up here at the top so I'm gonna go ahead and cut out my previous drop strands and then this guy you guys ready to be dropped I'm gonna bring him around the back here and then underneath and around to the front and hold it in place I want yeah I wanna under everything just to hold it in place and kind of keep help keep this angle right if you're not sure and then so I brought that strand around and I'll bring this next strand around from the same side and I'm gonna go right alongside of it and over the top of it and now that'll kind of that strand will hold the drop stranded place and get a little bit of tug and then and then he can like just sit there in the back and don't get this from you can find drop strands like this in Joe strains work at enter jakka's work you do not see it in David Morgan's work I think you do see it in Leonard Wheatley's whips and there are ways to avoid it but what you anyway what you get though is so you get this little double up right there if you can see it but it's funny that is sort of in a place where people don't notice it as much as if it were on this part of the seam which is where David Morgan's double-ups happen and if I wanted I could have just flip the whole whip over and made this be the front and then I could have dropped these strands the same way as I dropped these ones up here and then you'd have a drop that looks like this where there's just a little gap you kind of gotta push the strands through to cover up as opposed to this double up and that's how Chris Barr would drop strands but it takes a little bit more effort and I've only been doing it on my 275 quart stock whips because the way that cord lays in I just get near strand drops when I do that I should also mention on the 275 cord because it's finer I actually dropped two strands at a time instead of just one strand at a time so that's kind of the other thing is that I turn it over so that way dropping two strands at a time ends up neater now I'm ready to drop the other one out the back so I can get down to 12 plat this is my shortest strand bring it around underneath everything sort of hold it in place and then it's from the same side bring another strand around and screw that up in place and I'm braiding up my regular 12 platter I guess one thing you can see with the sort of the doubled up little strand wrap thing is that it also helps you can kind of hide it a little bit if you smoosh it together like have it at a more severe angle so that way both of them kind of like meet or overlapping right where they meet the seam that kind of helps hide it a little bit you will notice like with this strand drop so you get a little bitty gap right there which is kind of a telltale sign of that kind of drop now with this drop you get the double up but you don't get any kind of little tiny gap but usually that little tiny gap doesn't bug people as much as double ups do as far as like the cosmetic nature of the whip I know I made eight plat cowhide Indiana Jones style bullwhip for a guy and because it's eight plat the strands are much wider and any double ups you have are much more visible and he sent me a picture I'd be like you made a mistake here and I'm like no that's just how the whips made man but on the same token the way I'm dropping strands here is the same way there was a similar way to how it gels strange what I think Jo actually would drop like where I drop one out of the back he would at the same time drop one out of the front so he's dropping two strands at the same time so on one side you'd see this little gap thing and and right next to it you'd see us it'll double up thing and he made me a two-tone sixteen plant bullwhip and he did the strand drops that way so I could see the double up but I had already been studying with making long enough to know how you could hi or not have those double ups at all so I went out some online for him and I posted pictures of the whip and my little critique about it and included about the patterns and like I didn't know that Joe had to put a lot of time into getting that whip to come together he actually had enough leather leftover or other pieces leftover to make a whole nother two-tone whip and so I had my little criticisms and I've just a snot-nosed Punk and he was kind of pretty upset with me about it and it took a long time before he ever made me another whip because I was so damn picky at one point he was like if that's what you want just make it yourself the apana this diameter I met here was 12 Platt it's about this this is about what the diameter of a performance hybrid whip would be it started about this diameter yeah say I stood my other strand drops this is like all 12 Platt here and then you can see a little divot right there a little gap that's where my drop strand sucked in and the other two strands trying to make up the sort of difference in the lack of that strand being there so now I'm into 11 Platt I'm going on this side going under 3 over 2 then just want to make sure the Strand is under 3 inches of planting so it doesn't pull out and then my goal here is to be to the 8 Platt by the end of my braided belly so there's the 10 Platt sections how you're not going to be too terribly long here the other strand out here so this guy just gets again that'd be a straight drop out the front and then into my ten plant section now so I'll probably only do this ten plus section about three inches or so and then I'll be ready to last I need to work faster I know I saw a thing online or somebody was asking about wax that would not get like flaky or turn white under stress and one comment I think from rufus ruffcut was to use soy wax and someone else said to add petroleum jelly to the wax and that can help soften it up so so you wouldn't use like all petroleum jelly but I guess they're both petroleum products just with different properties so if you wanted a softer wax you could add the petroleum jelly I guess mostly I would experiment with different melting points because I thought it seemed to me that some waxes with like a lower melting point who are just a little bit softer and wouldn't leave as much white residue see how far we had a little bit more like ten five then get ready to drop they're less animals got three feet extra on there and that was my I think 17 foot strand so I probably could have made that one like 14 feet and been fine some of these strands I'll be able to use for the knots on the handle or maybe even for the fall so it's not like it all goes to waste and then this is dropping from ten to nine so now I'm gonna drop off the back again so I'm basically alternating drops two drops out the front two drops out the back two drops out the front and kind of alternate all the way down be interesting to find out who out there has the time to watch this video from start to finish I know I probably would not but I suppose I'm in it so I should watch it so I know what everyone sees like oh man I look like that in the video I'll be watching several times yeah you will oxygen more than anybody else I'll have it memorized a lot of people from different countries wanting Trek wanting my videos translated into their language is interesting I think somebody from Russia actually did translate it into Russia like they wrote down your text and then did a voiceover you know subtitles or something huh interesting I'm limited in my foreign language abilities let's see some of German my nap idea is to kaput my width is broken um it's Swedish then throw it on at home and that is who does she think she is I could have thrown some swear words in there but ya don't know let's see I could have dropped some come back yeah I remember when I first got into whip making or particularly nylon whip making I guess after having made with several years it seemed like I could crank these out super fast yeah cuz I was I was very motivated and and then it's like the more I did it the slower and slower I got because I suppose the more and more it seemed like sort of Drudge work yeah and I definitely find that with my whip making now I don't like doing a whole lot of it at a time usually I only like at most I prefer doing a couple hours a day it's now I'm gonna peel off my little bit of my holding tape here because there can be no you tape in a whip heaven forbid don't say it kids well we're gonna use a little bit of it to even out the foundation of my knot but otherwise yeah in the body of the width is I'm not using electrical tape okay drop strand so now we're off the belly and I guess this is maybe where things get more interesting and because what I'm going to want to do is basically I want to braid my eight plant down to where there's two strands in the core so I'll braid down maybe a couple inches past or maybe I write about two there and and once I do that I will be running two strands on the inside of the whip from the eight plant all the way down to the four plant and then the four plant will get go from two strands down to one strand down to no strands and the core so Adam is there a particular part of whip making that you dread the most just hate mm-hmm see trying to think I guess probably the dreading part is like looking at a list of orders that I have you'd be like I gotta make just whips and that's probably the only dread part but because I'm only doing it as a hobby and mainly just for friends there will be a little bit more understanding usually if I don't make their whip right away right and and also that gives me the luxury to wait to make their order until I feel like it and I definitely tell that makes a big difference in like my enjoyment of the work is when I do it only one I feel like it then I like it a lot better because obviously I feel like it I'm not like got my head down like I don't grumbling I got do this thing I don't feel like it I know I'm just waiting until I feel like it but probably what yeah it gets me more motivated is when I'm making a whip to do a specific thing that I have in my head like um say it finally I want to whip better to do the four corners or I want this whip to be volley faster would be better for tosses is come up with an idea execute it and then the fastest I will usually ever make a whip is once I've made that first one and it doesn't do exactly what I want but I have some ideas of how to change it then that second whip will get made pretty quickly because I want to see if I was right or wrong hmm about the changes that I thought about making and I say that and he'll be like well how do you know how to change it and that would probably be a separate video of B stuff you like can change in a whip let's say for instance with this whip here this has kind of a thick handle a steel handle and it's nice it has a heavy profile like it says bull whip but say if somebody it was a performer and they wanted to do more like volley type tricks like fast 20 whip cracking but it has to be a bull whip I would probably go with a graphite handle and I recently did a repair on a whip that I made or a set of whips I made where the graphite I got help how big it was thicker than normal but that way the core actually didn't go over the whole handle it just went like through the last couple inches of the handle and then there was only a belly in the overlay over the handle so there was less paracord in it to make the handle lighter and that made it crack better work or he liked him anyway so now I'm gonna start dropping and so all these strands are the same length so that means I can drop base I don't have to keep looking for which one is my short strand I can just pick whichever one I want to drop and then the other thing I'm gonna do is cut out that shorty right there is I'm gonna always tie a knot in the one strand that's left after I cut one because I want him after I drop this strand in what I would like is I want I know that this trying to be the next one I cut off so I would like this strand to go through say two drops or be care a little bit further in the whip so that way it's less likely to pull out so let's see if that makes sense I want to make sure I did this this got dropped in that's a now at 7 plant and then this woman the knot will get cut out yet and when I drop from 7 to 6 if that means this other one will get carried a little bit longer and I'll keep alternating it that way through the rest of the whip so that way those strands get carried a little bit further and this could be one of those things and like you know it just sounds good but really it doesn't matter I'm some shorter whips you're gonna do these drops here at the end a little bit faster than say like three inches so particularly if you're doing that it helps to alternate which strands actually get cut out of the core when you're dropping so that way your actual drop strand stays in longer and probably the bummer with this parachute cord is that the this end part here ends up being the I guess bulkiest or sort of like we're just looking as far as the planning especially compared to a leather whip in a leather whip you would have just finer strands at the end or you'd only come down to six plat and you'd be done so now I want to cut out the one with the knot on it because I'm ready to drop again so I'd do that OOP and then I'm gonna put a knot in this one that's still in the core so that way this is the next one to cut off because this one's been in the core this far and then I want to make sure it's in the core this far again before doing my next drop in there and now I'm into my six plat and in this six plant here as I am going under - over one on both sides yeah almost ready to drop another one so I'm gonna drop out but back and look for my strand with the nut on it that one out on this guy so I brought it around that'll bring around another one quite three inches let's - I'll do one more stay here trim out the one with the dot on it you got to put it out on this one and now I'm into for plant and I'm gonna braid this just a little bit and then I'm gonna see where the measurement on my whip is because I'm gonna have basically five sections of tapering left in this whip four strands over two strands in the core four strands over one strand in the core four strands over nothing three strands twisted and then two strands twisted and it makes five sections so I'm gonna smell this whip and see how long is right now and how far along I have to go to get six feet and then however much further I have to go I'll divide that by five and I'll make each of those sections like that long just an even amount for the rest of the length of the wig so hopefully I've got I'll have some room to move so let's see how far we are long we are still roundabout there it's right at my drop basically I'm at about let's see 50 54 inches so let's see 6 feet is 72 or 54 inches is four and a half feet so that means I've got another 18 inches to go so we'll ballpark that it's 18 inches funded by five so I'm gonna make my last two core strands I think I'll go ahead and make each one of these about four so that'll get me eight inches and then the last ones I'll make about four three and three and that should get me my taper so now find the one with the knot that one gets cut out first and then this next one cut out at 8:00 [Music] this so this one might be say a little bit lighter in the end because you can change kind of how heavy the bullwhip is by maybe making the belly longer so I braided this belly out six inches I mean past the core I could have braided it about a foot past the core and that would have meant that this will sort of tail out section here of the four plat and the twisted tail it would have made all that much shorter but sometimes if you tail it out like this a little bit longer it makes for a whip that's a little bit faster lighter may be easier to volley but it wouldn't cut cans in half very well so I have seen some whips I guess all the older whips I've seen in nylon like ones made by Chris decaying or Gordy peer or whips made - Gordy peers design as they would braid four strands right to the end of their last little core strand there and then they would begin a four strand twist and that's what I was initially doing and then I showed or I was working with a guy named Conrad rustenberg of whips and whatnots and Conrad did one of his whips I think where he just continued the four strand braid instead of doing a four strand twist and then went then went from a four strand braid to a three strand twist and I like oh that makes more sense like why I do more twisting than you have to and looking back on it now I did a little experiment of doing like a twisted tail with leather and now I can understand that probably what those guys were copying with their four strand twists is what the Florida whip makers were doing with buckskin and they were doing twisted tales and you really can't start I would say the taper of the twisted tail or what I should say is there's no way to transition from a four strand round buried in leather cleanly into a three strand twist you can do it with nylon because you can just cut that strand off infuse it but you can't do that with leather with leather you got to go to a four strand twist then a three strand twist then a two strand twist and you leave a little tail of leather sticking out wherever one of the strands ends so I guess that is why those guys were doing a four strand twist at the very end of their whips into all the way down to a two strand twist but you can just do like what I'm doing here and just braid it the next bit so I want this part to be 4 inches yeah so now do the twist so the so I've got to came over on my right side or yeah there so this one's going to get left up here and then these two strands that cross are going to get twisted together and this strand up here I'm going to start twisting it and bring it around I'll pull it in tight I start twisting it and they bring it around and then these two strands get twisted together so you can see that makes for a twist that where everything is kind of in there tight there's no like one strand going over a lot of other strands and then twist this for three inches and then drop out another strand one of those just popped up there and then these two strands I'll just get cut off and melted and that'll keep them in place taper to us is nice because it's just such a fine point at the tip of the river yeah yeah only if the whips going to somebody that I know was gonna do a lot of heavy cracking with it then I'll just come down to a 4-strand points and tie a fall on but pretty much for anything else I'll come down to a two strand twist yeah so that's fine enough for that I was gonna hitch this off to hold in place and then I'm gonna make a phone to put on this guy so some things I need to like the paracord and I need to fit a lighter and a forceps I'm gonna buy a new forceps I sort of meant this one but it'll work first I am not used to using needles with parachute cord I guess what I do is I just take a piece of stiff wire I sort of round it off the ends I shove it in there and then I'm gonna fuse it shut so that's nice and round like that I'm just I'm gonna double it over and then I can come back just a little bit there and now take the FID open up a little hole keep that open shout this in there that's this gets fed through there I'll put this where my twisted ends so now I'll completely close that little loop around all around the end of the whip no I can now this is a style of fall hitch I got from Conrad rustenburg as I'm like here and I got my two strands one going either side so I'll take one and go around back and then through in between the fall and the point of the whip and they'll so cinch that went up tight and hold it in place and I'll do the same thing with the other one go on the other side so go around and through and then so you see I've got they both come on either side now I hold them tight and I pull this down now I can tighten these up and if you just leave it like that I mean it'll hold together like this now but it would come undone so actually maybe you could like cussin if those infuse it maybe it would stay but it would be really hard to like replace the fall without losing a bunch of length of the whip so what I'll do now is take the fid open up the loop a little bit and go back with the forceps and now I'm gonna take each side and I had and pull it through to the frown to the front so if you can sort of see that this is why I had it before where I just trying to come to the side and decide so one's going to go around the back and Boop go through the eye of the fall like there on that side and then this other one here it's gonna go back around this is the eye of the fall bear go and that is slick with those just pulling it through with those forceps yeah yeah so it's basically like that so you can see each one of these tails start on the other side and then I brought it around the back and plucked it through the eye of the fall and that holds it in place and then I can pull on these two a little bit and now that's tied now I just need a scissors and my lighter I think the scissors first I'll cut these guys I don't leave them too terribly long and then I'm gonna fuse these together and I can trim off these guys now and then with this fall at the end of it so this is the part that got fed inside so I'll peel that back and snip that off and then that's how you do that and then pull this down that way and so now the fall has a taper to it it's two strands and then that sucks out there and then I just got one strand I always thought you took the needle and just went half way through and then poked a needle out unscrewed it so that you could have half of it hollow like you just did there I didn't no no that's that's how I do it that's cool and then I'm just gonna guesstimate at the length of the phone and fuse this [Applause] so now I'm gonna flex it a little bit and I kind of tell where it stops flexing that's about where the steel rod ends so I'm going to bind about right up to that point yeah we're about there it's good oh yeah I guess I'd miss users from that part and then now so yeah I'll sharp one of these is maybe it's about like there I don't want to jam the knife into the steel rod I think I'm a little safe so now I can see yeah there's a little extra parts that just gets cut off and I can see I can't see the steel rod so I can see I could have cut right off at the binding trim this up with the scissors I guess I'm gonna take a lighter just go ahead and fuse all that there now I can build up my not foundation so with this knot I'm gonna make this one a little bit different than in a video I posted last fall my usual method we're doing a knot on a whip would be to put a braided layer a flat braid over this and then build it up and then do a knot but I've since learned how to do a Turk said that closes all the way at the end so I'm gonna do one of those for this video so for my foundation since a knot will cover that I don't have to bother to do anything with that right now and I'm just going to do about I'm gonna see how this works maybe I'll go ahead and do one wrap so I sort of fuzz out the end hole with my thumb I planner like that I'm gonna do about four wraps down and then wrap back pull that in there tight just the air check out there they'll start wrapping back see don't and now us to sort of hold this in place and to kind of act as a little bit of filler to take up some of the gaps I'm gonna just put a little wrap of electrical tape on there just hold that [Music] that and then now do a couple staples I think I learned about using staples to hold a knot foundation down from Jim Hurlbutt and then I showed it to Chris bar and initially he pooh-poohed it and then he tried it it was like I guess actually that is pretty convenient no no we can put a knot on it all right I'll use one strand for this knot and I cut this strand about seven foot long and like I said I'm not really always used to using needles so I'm just gonna go ahead and put in my little wire stiffener I think this is something I got from Lauren Wickline I think putting a little stiffener in there to tie the knot so it's not I'm gonna tie is basically just a variation on Turks head and the first thing you do is you just tie a 4-byte 5-part Turks head and you tie that and you go twice around or you do two passes with it let's see there's some fuzzies on this teal paracord I'm gonna have to burn off so this part here you should be able to look up on several different youtube videos and this FID is just a screwdriver that I ground down and I learned about making vids with a screwdriver it's better to find one that has a round shaft to it because I didn't think about it too much and I made a fit out of a screwdriver and it had a square shaft and then one not later I learned it like why do the points of my fingers hurt and that's because you're always grabbing the FID like this and you really grabbing it hard and if it's square you're probably grabbing the edges of it so it's just that great so now I'm just gonna adjust my knot a little bit to try to even up the size of those squares in there and sort of let's sit around with this just even all the way around check out the top that's close enough now I'll do a second pass and this particular knot will not start getting interesting until the third pass I mean say some people really like nuts and some whip makers don't and I guess it sort of surprised me how many like I guess new paracord whip makers I would see pop up and they would come up with all of these other solutions to putting a knob on the end of the handle that did not involve tying a Turk said because they just didn't want to tie a Turks in I guess for me building the knobs on the ends of whips it didn't really become easy until I got Ron Edwards book about whips and whip making where I saw that he would just take like a strip of leather and taper it and tack one end down and wrap it around tack the other end and then trim it and and I was super easy compared to what I used to be doing which was sort of like trying to build up random pieces leather and string hopefully it would hold together so I that's why I like this method here of just um doing a wrap of parachute cord and stapling it or holding in place temporarily with the electrical tape and then putting in staples makes it a real easy way to control the shape of the foundation and to also make something that's like solid easy to repeat okay so here is where it gets special now so I normally you would just come up right through here and that would be the end of your knot but now what we're gonna do is I'm gonna come up in between the passes like that I'm gonna go under for everything right there and come up in between those two and now I'm gonna go through the rest of this knot and I'm always gonna go in between my first two passes but I'm also gonna go opposite of those two passes so right now these are on top so I'm gonna go underneath so I'm gonna split them and do the opposite under there that and now of course I'm gonna go over and in between these two and go under I'm just gonna go under those two so I'm not trying to pick up go under the one that I just did so just going under the first and second pass yeah so I keep that same pattern going and then the the crux of this knot will become obvious in a second so now here we're to this spot where I've already split my pairs so now yeah we're gonna go under one that was my first pass and then we're gonna go over one which is the pass I'm doing now where I'm splitting the pair's and then we're gonna go under one which was my second pass so that's what's creating or what will create a knot that has the say over one under one pattern to it so you can kind of see these outer ones here they're like this way in this way that was our two original passes and then the middle ones that cross each other here that's the pass we're doing now and that's what creates the diamond effect nice so now we'll go over the whole thing so any spot that I get to where I've already split it one so like here now I'm gonna go yeah so right here this is that's this little butt here that's my first pass this one here's my second pass and that little one stuck underneath there is my third pass so I've gotta go I'm gonna go over one under one over one and then done that and now right down here I'm gonna go under one which was my second pass and then over one and I kind of sneak in there and go over one so it was under one over one under one and you can see how this one that I'm going under right now sort of that one is it right at the very bottom so I think that's my first pass and then now I can continue up where I haven't split it yes so I'm not trying to tie this very tight now because this knot is a kind of not this nice wool once you tighten it up because of the over one under one pattern it'll become like a rock it's come super tight yep so now I'm in a new spot where I'm gonna go do the under one over one and you can sort of see it forming at the top how it's closing up and it will just be a very clean checkerboard under one over one pattern on the top and probably bout the only bomber with it's not is as clean as the top looks the bottom is not that clean looking it's not as clean looking as other Turks heads because you'll you kind of see here you've got like from your first pass you've got these bytes that are kind of long and then you've got some from your second pass like here this one's really short and I hidden really well and then you've got your other sort of bytes from this third pass here let's sort of sit in kind of awkward leaning so I mean it's not not the worst thing in the world but it is kind of strange compared to say that like for me anyway for other knots that I'm more familiar with but I think the fact that not everybody does this not that makes it unique that's kind of why I like now that I know how to do it I like doing it now and she makes sure to give a shout out to Glenn ward of GJ WIPs because it was Glenn that I was able to explain to me on to the phone how to tie this knot coz I've also seen this not on whips by Gordy pier but Gordy Pierre would not tell me how to tie this knot and for me mostly just once I knew the gist of it that you you take your third pass and go in between the first two passes splitting them everything doing opposite of what those other passes do and then just making is the diamond pattern it was all pretty clear but I guess usually how I remember knots is more from like a basic concept of just know this like one or two things about the pattern and then you can tie it so it's not like when I'm remembering this not that I have to really consciously think about what every over-and-under is I'm just thinking about the basic concept that it's based on so it takes up less space in my memory see I'm not tying it completely tight so we're gonna have to go through course and um tighten up this whole guy and if you are tying this knot and you make it and it's like a little gapi that means your foundation is too big so if your whip hand will work bigger you probably do like one wrap a paracord on there instead of two like what I did or if you tie it and everything is just too bunched up then you gotta make your foundation bigger and here's also where it gets a little bit wonky where you see this is where like my that was my first pass and this is where my first pass comes up and starts my second pass so I'm actually gonna cross over the top of that so this ends up with like group just a little divot up I guess it's not the same sort of length as the rest of the knot so it's not like the worst thing in the world and then Geneva diamond part I'm going actually a little bit past the starting point it's got one more here to the air and that was the last pass so now I was to use my Fit and I apply errs and I'll tighten that up but even with Glen wart explaining this not to me I had bought a set of whips from him that had this knot on it and I figured I should get before he explained it to me I should give it a try on my own to try to figure out how the heck to do it and I'm used to other knots where like you're never going you're always liked working always that going above something or always working and going below something you never like going above going like above it one way and then below it another way if that makes any sense so my initial concept of how this knot was made was not correct but definitely having made that frustrating effort first and then being then being told the answer and having everything makes sense it felt a lot more satisfying getting that answer but of course now anyone that watches this video maybe knows how to do this knot and so I'm done tightening up my knot so this isn't maybe the neatest way to finish toss but this is what I do so I use take of scissors and I cut it pretty close to the end I Steve a little tassel out and then I'm gonna burn that with a cigarette lighter now some people may be like Torrance Fisher probably Nick Schrader are better at hiding the ends of their knots and maybe someday I could get better at it - I've also I do at one point I was I took a a soldering iron and I ground it down so it was sort of like the end of my screwdriver there so it's like more like a blade and then I heat it up and you could take and go and use it to cut that end real smooth but that was like a whole nother process and I don't know just using the lighter goes pretty fast with here it's a little bit of a bummer because the this stuff apparently like burns and becomes black so it kind of stands out so this method is probably the best used on a black material because then the the fused part almost becomes imperceptible but anyway those are not it's now ready to roll it and I got to put a knot right there [Applause] all right that's all I'm gonna tie on my transition not is a call Spanish ring not that I got out of Bruce grants port and it goes together pretty quick exactly what I'm going to do you can see where the swell is right there so probably my knot is just going to be right behind the swell on the handle side of it you start out by tying a three I know that's I guess this is 5 by 3 part Turks head and then you do an inner weave that makes it the Spanish bring bones and then so kind of get into position and I also try to sort of match up these burned ends with these burned ends and then with any luck when I take my picture of the whip I can hide them both on the opposite side of the picture so that way they don't show up on Instagram and then my wife Dakota however always wants to make sure that they show in the pictures that way a customer can't complain later on be like this whip has a defect yeah as I go I'm trying to pull it in tighter and tighter if I pull the whole thing as tight as I can it'll end up a little lopsided in spots right there and then just my fires all right so if I'm a little bit more careful trimming these ends maybe I can have a little bit less of that black burnt part showing but also particularly with this not what you see is you see how white it is and I haven't rolled it yet so when I rolled it it's not is gonna squish out and like the paracord won't relax and they're gonna be a real problem if I didn't fuse these ends and get enough little bird stuck up that it'd be really easy for the paracord to slip out and for part of the not to loosen and so that's I guess one reason why I'll tolerate the ugliness of the burnt ends like this because I know when I go to roll the not those those ends will keep the knot from loosening I'll just give it I guess I'm light roll it seems a little bit too squished out there so it's only a little bit flatter moment of truth there we go I put this whip in the whiz axe yeah that is sitting there till no more air bubbles come up most of the air bubbles are out that's good enough so let's just grab it by the skinny end and wipe all the you can tear that in half if you want to that towel it's a rag you can just hope it'll help you so use this old towel part there and because the rest of the whips gonna be super hot let's point out and we'll go lay it out and let it cool down ragtag probably attach a crack here before it cools off let's put a cracker on it like what I usually use in my shows it's two lengths of poly string and then I find this stuff doesn't twist up very well with a drill so I'm just gonna tie it tie it onto the end of the whip it's so now let's twist it right on whip how long have you been tying crackers like this Adam um since I met Ben Hughes and I met Ben in 2006 and then I'm pretty sure that's how I saw him do it so that's how I started doing it and then I saw him a year later and I was tying a cracker like this and it was I who told you how to do that like I saw you doing it so I'm guessing it was a rare thing for him maybe he just did it on a whim at one point and then I thought that's how you do it but I do find that with this stuff I think hand twisting it and gives it a better twist and like trying to twist it with a pencil or a drill yeah and like I mainly use this up because it doesn't tangle as much as nylon it doesn't last as long but I also like I like how it sounds compared to nylon crackers that is the last step of we're making photographic finish building this whip now we're gonna take it out and test crack it beautiful morning all right here we go guys Swift's done [Music] [Music] guys thank you so much for watching make sure you go check out Adams channel he's got a lot of great videos up on there go try this build out for yourself it's an awesome build it's quick give it a try thanks for watching subscribe like share with your friends see in the next think it's sucking the juices when I left Texas there were about 20 spider webs around my trailer

Channel: NicksWhipShop

Views: 490,648

Keywords: adam winrich, how to make a bullwhip, diy whip, whip tricks, whip stunts, paracord projects, homemade movie props, indiana jones whip, nick's whip shop, paracord whip, paracord bullwhip, bristol renaissance faire, firewhip guy, adam winrich fire whips, bullwhip stockwhip, fancy plaiting, turk's head knot, renaissance, bullwhip sound, bullwhip for sale, nick schrader

Id: Txk-taCc4Ik

Length: 153min 45sec (9225 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019