Earlier this evening I finished Bullwhip #9, and I am proud of how this one looks! During the day today I was looking online at pictures of whips from other makers and was amazed at how glossy thier whips looked while mine looked flat. then I remembered to put a layer of leather finish on it...and man o' man does that really finish the job!

So by finishing this whip I've learned something...use the estimate of 1 3/4 times the needed length for the strands. In the past I've used 2 X and ended up with a ton of extras strands that were waste. for this one I used 1 1/2, but was about an inch short and need to shorten the belly.

Also this whips strands had a great taper, basically what I did was cut a uniform width for double the lenght of the handle, then tapered it about a 1/3 turn on the strand cutter every 8ish inches.

here's the break down on this whip:

Cowhide core * cowhide 4 plait layer * cowhide bolster * Kangaroo 12 plait overlay

The whip has an 7 1/2 inch handle (turks head to turks head) * 3 foot 1 inch thong (to the fall keeper) * 18 inch thong * giving it a total lenght of 5 feet 2 1/2 ish inches.

this whip started with an 8 inch bolt for the handle. The core covered the handle and then tapered as it went out (the entire length of the whip). The 4 plait layer was 4 piece and the strands were cut so that they started at the end of the bolt. then the bolster didn't cover the lenght of the handle, but started about 1 1/2 inches from the end of the bolt (so it starts under the turks heard on the thong. Then the 12 plait layer is the entire lenght of the whip...dropping strands as necessary.

The knob and knots are all kangaroo and they turkshead at the thong looked ok when I made it, but after doing a board rolling session it flattened out a looks like a million bucks!