Who doesn’t like whips?

I think, like many people, I first got curious about whips after seeing Indiana Jones disarming Nazis and swinging across caverns so many years ago. He made bull whips cool for people who would likely never ride a horse, fight a bull, or get dropped into a lion cage on a circus train.

So as a kid I would play with whatever rope I could find and try to figure out how to get it to securely wrap onto something for spider-man like swinging. These days I have started making my own whips.

My whips are actually called Snake whips and are very similar to the Indiana Jones idea but they lack a stiff handle. The whips are flexible from end to end which makes them better for rolling up into a bag or pocket.

Mine are different from what you would typically see because I’m not coming at whips from a Stockman/farming perspective, I’m bringing my martial arts background into the building of my whips. Rather than the typical knot on the end of the handle mine are made with a solid steel ring on the end.  This makes it easy to hang on a hook or attach to a carabiner style clip.

I’ve also changed the way the “fall” on a whip is typically created.  Normally that would be one thin strip of leather with a cracker attached to the end.  On my whips I use a loop of gutted paracord and attach my cracker to that.  I realize that it is creating some drag and reducing the efficiency of the whips ability to “crack” but the trade-off is worth it and my whips crack just fine.
There are a bunch of additional reasons for the changes that I’ve made to my whips and I’ll publish all that info separately when I’m ready to start selling them. Let me know if you’re interested in one. I just won’t make promises right now as to how soon I could have it made because I recently injured myself so there’s a pile of things I can’t quite do at the moment. Maybe whip making will be part of my Physiotherapy.