[Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator]
In today's video, we're going to use the lace cutter that
we showed you how to make previously, cut a whole bunch of lace, and then follow a bunch of steps
to make a kangaroo hide bullwhip. Garrett is something
of an expert on bullwhips, at least a whole lot more than me, and in fact, if you've seen our video on how to make
the paracord and athletic tape bullwhip, Garrett is the one who taught me
how to do that in the first place. Here is the idea. We're going to be cutting out
a lot of kangaroo leather lace, wrapping, twisting, and braiding
it around itself to form a bullwhip. We'll take it outside and
give it a few tests. >> In order to make this 6 and 1/2
foot kangaroo hide bullwhip, we're gonna start with a paracord core, and we're going to fill
that core with BBs, so our bullwhip will have a little
bit more heft and weight to it. >> There we go.
I measured about two feet in. I twisted this flattened piece of paracord. As you saw, I pulled out the core so
it's an empty hollow piece of paracord, and then I hit it with the lighter just
enough that it really started melting, and by squeezing it together, it basically just formed
a solid plastic bit in the middle. So now I'm going to fill two
feet of this with BBs, and while I do that, Garrett is going to be
cutting some more lace, and explaining how you know
how thick your lace should be. >> So, right now we're working
on the very outside of the hide, and the outside is the most
stretchy part of the hide, so I'm cutting my strands
to be fairly wide. So I'm going to be cutting about
30 feet of lace for the first belly. [Music] Now that I've cut about 30 feet of lace, I'm going to end this specific cut. So the way I'm going to do that is I'm
going to slowly kind of taper it off, so I still have a nice curvature on
the end of the kangaroo hide. Now, you can see this outside
part of this-- of the kangaroo hide is actually pretty stretchy. So the next step we're going to do
is to run this through a hook, and kind of stretch all the stretch out of it so that we don't have
a loose braided whip. So to lubricate the strands, I've brought some of this
homemade plaiting soap, and basically what this is is just
emulsified lard, soap, and water, and it's all kind of mixed together and
then heated up and cooked in a stove, and then let to sit and turn into this
kind of pasty lardy substance. And what we're going to do, stretch them, is we're going to lubricate the
strands with this plaiting soap. So this is going to be our start. And then we're going to wrap
it around our hook. So to start stretching it, and start pulling it back
and forth on this hook. So as we go along, I'm going to be adding more
plaiting soap to the strands. >> We've now stretched out this-- this was 30 feet before
we stretched it out. >> Yeah. >> And it was definitely wider than this. We can sort of see
the crazy difference here, and this is what this looked like before, and here it is after. You can see how much more narrow it is, and it got a lot darker too. Like just basically, this just looks like
black leather at this point, which is pretty neat. Okay Garrett, we've got
the strander set back up, why are we running it back
through the strander? >> Yeah, so as we stretched the strands, different parts of the leather
stretch a little bit more than others. So we don't-- we didn't have a
completely consistent width. So we're running it through the strander
one more time at a slightly smaller width, that way we can have a completely, or as most as possible, a consistent strand. [Music] >> Very cool. 36 feet of our now almost
black kangaroo leather lace. >> So we need to cut about 8-9 inches
of this [inaudible] steel rod. [Music] >> To make our bar fit a little
bit nicer into our paracord, I'm just going to taper
the top a little bit just using a file. >> So we're just going to use a
piece of scrapped kangaroo hide, we're going to lay this down, and we're going to measure
how much we need to wrap around this entire
a little piece here. >> So, as we get our leather wrapped
around both the steel rod and the paracord, we're then going to wrap it tight
using this black artificial sinew [Music] We're done. We finished our whip.
>> Yep. >> Yes. This is the completed whip. >> The leather was just for fun. [Music] >> We are just about ready to start
plaiting our leather lace onto this rod, but this is a pretty slick metal
and our leather has some lotion all over it. So we're going to take some of this sinew, and wrap it all the way
around this metal rod so it gets a lot better grip
and doesn't just slide right off. >> So now we're going to want to find
the middle of each of these two strands, and then we're going to take
the bottom right-hand strand, take it over the top right-hand strand, and around, behind, and
in between the two left hand strands, then back around. [Music] Plaited, we have plaited our leather lace to-- what is it?
3 feet and 10 inches down this whip. 46 inches from the end of the handle over
there to where we braided it right here. And so now what we need to do is
cut off the four pieces of laces, and wrap it closed with
some of our artificial sinew. We're going to stair-step
them all the way back, so we end the belly in a way that tapers so we don't have this a sudden end. >> About right here. About here. [Music] >> So next, we need to roll the width. So when we roll the whip, it kind of rounds out all the edges, and makes it about as
perfectly around as we can get. I'm just going to start on this
end and work my way down and back. And I'm pushing with a fair amount of force because I want it to be
as compacted as possible. You can see a big difference in-- >> So unrolled here. Rolled here. You can see it fairly well
and you can definitely feel it. I mean this feels like
it's braided and this just-- you can feel a little bumps in it, but it doesn't feel like
the pieces of the plait are sticking out the way they are here. [Music] Next, we're going to put a cowhide
bolster on the outside of this whip. So basically, we're going
to cut a long tapering triangle that's going to cover
the entire surface of this whip, and this is going to help to kind of
reinforce all the area of the whip. It's going to help to make it
as perfectly around as possible, fill in all the gaps and it's going to just
help add a little bit of thickness as well. >> So what I'm thinking is
we can take this squared up edge, we can fit that around
any given part of the whip, curl it really tight, and then we can mark where it's making
contact with the leather. [Music] We also-- we want to make sure that the
bolster's completely straight over the whip. We don't want it to kind of twist around. Yeah we want we want a straight seam
going the entire way down the whip. [Music] Okay. So, we're now going
to be adding leather dressing. Is this a homemade thing
or just a product that you buy? >> No, this is just leather dressing. It's-- this is Pecard's leather dressing. It's pretty standard for whip making. One thing that can happen
with leather whips that get dry, if they're not very well
conditioned on the inside, is the core will start
become kind of crusty, and as the different layers of the whip
kind of rub against each other you'll actually end up with a squeaky whip, and your whip will squeak any
time you move it or try to crack it. >> Wonder who in the
whip making process was like, "My whip is kind of squeaky." "I wonder how I can fix that." "I'll try adding some
weird goop on the inside." [Music] We've now wrapped the whip all
the way down to the end of the leather, and in fact, even a little bit
beyond the cow leather bolster onto the paracord just a bit, and Garrett is telling me that
to reinforce it a little bit more, we actually want to
keep wrapping it a few times because we have a metal stick to about right here, and if we try and crack
our whip just the way it is, then it's just going to end up
hinging right on that point so much that it breaks the leather over time. So to reinforce that, we have to go over that a few times. So what we're going to do is we're
going to keep wrapping with the sinew down a couple feet and then back and then a little bit less, and then back and then less again, and then back and so we're just going to
kind of be bouncing smaller and smaller to give a really tapered reinforcement. We've wrapped the heck out of this thing, and you can see that we don't
have a really sharp bending point at the end of the handle
or really anywhere along there. It just kind of keeps going with
this nice tapered rolling edge. That's just we want, and now we're just going
to take this whole thing, and roll it again the same way
we did when we just had the belly. >> So we're going to take our
very high-tech whip rolling device. I sell Artisan whip rolling devices
on Etsy for $480 each. Check my page. [Music] We've now wrapped
and rolled this whole thing, so Garrett, what is our next step next? >> We are going to be cutting
and prepping the overlay strands. >> More lace. So we're just going to cut
a bunch of long strands. We're actually-- we have two hides, so I'm going to work on a hide
and you're going to work on a hide. >> Let's get cutting. [Music] >> This leather that we've just cut out, we're going to be cutting out
three 22 foot pieces, and that's because we're
going to be ending in a 6 point fall hitch. So when we reach the very end
of the whip, the longest strand, we're going to be using six strands. And then we're going to cut
an 18-foot, a 14-foot, and a 10-foot, and those will get dropped
at various points in the whip. I'm holding all our kangaroo lace
by the middles that we found when we were cutting them. I'm going to do a little bit of
braiding to make a little bit of a loop that will make it easy
to attach to our whip. Okay, so I'm going to
take this first strand, and then I'm going to go under, over, under, over, under, over and I'm just going to
kind of lay it over here. I'm gonna take this one.
I'm gonna go under, over. >> So that second one is just
the opposite of what the first one was. >> Yep. I'm gonna take this last strand. This is the strain that was all the way
to the right side, the smallest strand. I'm going to take it, wrap it around, and then under. So this under over under over
pattern is called Diamond plait. [Music] >> Right now, at this point, it looks like we've got pretty
much the whole handle done, and you said that's about
8 inches worth of handle. >> Yes. So for on the handle,
we did a diamond plait, which was an under one, over one,
under one, over one, under one, over one. And if we did that for
the entire length of the whip, we would be here for 10 years and it would be a lot of work,
and it wouldn't be worth it. So what we're going to do is we're
going to transfer from a diamond plait to what's called a herringbone plait. So we're going to take, we're gonna go
under these first three strands, and then over the next three strands, and we're going to continue
that pattern down the thong. [Music] Okay, so as we go down
the length of the whip, we actually have to drop strands. two strands that are shorter than the rest be taken away from the size
where I'm plaiting, and just gonna go straight into the core. So they're just going to be plaited
around as if they are part of the core. Now, I'm going to cut these off but I don't
want them to be just like an immediate stair-step because I want to have
a nice smooth taper. So to get the best taper possible,
I'm going to cut these at kind of long angles. [Music] Now that we finished the--
all the braiding of the overlay, we need to add the fall. To make the fall,
we've cut about four feet of paracord. It's not going to be an exact science, and we are going to make a tapered fall, so it's going to have
a little bit of a tapered twist that gets thinner and thinner and thinner until it becomes just one strand, until we get to where
the cracker starts. So the paracord has this inner guts to it. I'm just gonna pull this
down as much as possible. We're removing the guts from both ends because the middle is
where it's going to attach, and then it's going to be
twisted up to a certain point. They're not lining up. Again, everything with the whip
wants to be tapered. On one side, the guts are ending here,
on the other side they're ending here. So we get smaller and then smaller again, just because we always like to
go in increments all the way down. >> The way we're going to twist this... We're going to twist each
strand in the same direction, and let's begin twisting
it around each other. What we're going to do now is thread
one of these strands into the other strand so it becomes one slightly thicker strand. And this lacing needle has
little threads on the inside of it that we can thread onto this paracord, and it will hold on to it tight. So I'm going to take this strand that's
been threaded into our lacing needle. I'm just going to thread it straight into... >> Stabbing through
the side of the paracord. >> That's just gonna go right in. So now, I'm just going to
run my finger along here so that we get the exact same length of each strand of paracord. Then we're going to snip it off. And I'm going to keep my finger
on here so they don't move. And I'm going to fuse the inner
and the outer strand together [Music] >> This is the last time we roll it, right? >> Exactly. >> Okay. [Music] This whip is looking really sweet but it doesn't have the iconic
handle decoration bits on it. What are we going to do about that? >> We're going to be adding
a heel knot in a transition knot. For the heel knot, we're going to build up
a foundation using some scrap leather, and we're going to tack that on
with some nails and artificial sinew. >> Now, we're adding
a second piece of leather, which is going to be kind of cross-shaped. And we're going to put that over the end of it. [Music] >> Okay. Now we have
our heel knot foundation done. Now we're going to make
a foundation for our transition knot. [Music] Okay. Now, we have our foundations done. Now we're going to go and tie the knots on. [Music] There we go. We've got the knots added onto the handle. We added a cracker onto the end of it that's going to make it so
we can make that popping noise we love so much. I think we need to give this thing a test. >> Let's go.
>> Let's head outside. >> Let's get cracking. >> We have come outside and
it is time to finally test this whip. [Music] There you go. A fully
functional kangaroo hide whip. Garrett, thank you so much for
teaching us how to make these today. >> Yeah. No problem. I had an awesome time doing it with you. >> Overall, I think this took
about 12 hours of work to do, and we could probably do
it a little bit faster than that if we weren't filming at the same time. That always slows things down
but I would say that's a good estimation for how much time it would
take for your first time through. Garrett, if people are interested
in learning more about whip making, what do you suggest? >> There were two books that
I actually thought were super useful when I was kind of learning
how to make leather whips. The first was "How to Make Whips"
by Ron Edwards. Another book that I thought
was really useful was "Whips and Whipmaking"
by David Morgan. and it just gives you a lot of general
knowledge about just whips in general, all kinds of whips and
it was really really useful. If you're interested there links
in the description below of where you can get your
hands on those books. Guys, that's not all,
we've got more for you to see. That box up at the top will
transport you to our last video, where we showed you how to make
the strand cutter that we used a lot today. The box at the bottom will
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