[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.
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