The other day I was making a shot bag for a whip. If you don’t know what a shot bag is, essentially it’s a bag that holds lead shot (hence the name shot bag) inside the whip. My shot bags are made out of a tapered strip of leather that is rolled into a tube.
This tube is then filled with fine lead shot.
Mmm…margarita and lead!
Here’s a quick video of me filling up a shot bag:
The main reason that I use a shot bag is to add weight to a whip. This is mostly used (by me) on whips that have no handles like signal whips or snake whips.
From 1/28/12 to 2/8/12 I’ll be out of town. So no whip orders will ship and no work on custom orders will happen. All work will resume and whip orders will on 2/9/12 when I return!
Right now I’m having a little sale on all IN STOCK whips! From now until Tuesday morning 11/29/11 I’ve knocked 20% off all whips (bullwhips, snake whips, etc) that I have IN STOCK. Of course all of my IN STOCK whips are ready to ship out and if they are for delivery in the USA they will make it to you by Chirstmas!
So it’s been a while since I’ve gone on a little rant about bullwhips being offered on ebay. Now here’s a bullwhip buying tip (this is just my opinion):
Never buy a bullwhip off ebay that isn’t finished!
Honestly I don’t know why anyone would preorder a whip off ebay from an unknown maker. Here are a couple of reasons why:
1. Unknown quality of whip: It’s never a good idea to buy a whip sight unseen from someone whose work you haven’t at least seen pictures of!
2. Unknown reliability of seller: You don’t know if your whip will be delivered on time or at all!
Here’s my main issue with this listing…the seller is selling a bullwhip but has a picture of a snake whip in the listing! Does this mean the person has never made a bullwhip that they have a picture of and can post on the listing? I don’t know…but would I personally gamble $350 of my own money on it…nope!
The other thing is since this person says they are doing it for “Therapy” why are they waiting for you to buy it and not just making it and selling it after it’s finished? Making whips is something that I love to do and am passionate about and I make them without having orders. That’s the way I’ve always done it. If you want something specific that I’m not currently working on then yes you’ll have to prepay it. However this seller doesn’t appear to have anything in the pipeline or much past experience since all the bullwhip listings have the same picture of a snake whip. So this is an attempt to get you to prepay their therapy instead of them paying for their own!
Here’s a good example of making for the love of making bullwhip is that I just made an 8 foot Indy Bullwhip because I enjoy doing it…not because someone paid me to. I am selling it on my IN STOCK whips page (hint hint).
Oh one other thing that gets me with this auction is the “estimated delivery date” which (for me) shows it at November 17 -18. That’s over a 5 weeks away from today…but the listing says it’s a 3 week turn around time…hmmmm…once again personally I’m not going to gamble my $350 on a whip that’s delivery date is about a week and a half past the 30 day protection that paypal has.
I’m curious what you think about this…think I’m right…think I’m wrong…let me know in the comments of this post.
A while ago a person who had ordered a snake whip about 1 1/2 to 2 years ago from me sent me an email saying the whip was leaking a tar like substance. Here’s one of the pictures that he sent:
He said the that he’d clean it up, but it’d just reappear again in the next day or two. I’d never heard of anything like this before and set out to do a bit of research (calling my whip maker friends).
Pretty much everyone’s first reaction was that it was weather related. However that was just everyone’s first guess. No one had ever seen or heard of this except Paul Nolan! One of the vintage Cecil Henderson whips that Paul has also does this, but he doesn’t know why.
At this point I became very curious…personally I like to know why things do things (not just how). So I offered the snake whip’s owner a trade, I’d make them a new snake whip if I could take apart the old one to see what was happening.
Before I show you the inside of the snake whip, here’s a very good tip for any whip maker, You can learn a lot by taking apart one of your own whips! That’s right, I knew what was inside this snake whip, but I learned a lot about how my construction techniques hold up by taking apart a well used whip that was about 2 years old.
Here’s the whip dissection photos:
The snake whip when I got it back
Untying the fall hitch
Unplaiting the point
Look at how the filler strands compress to fill up the available or unavailable space
You can see filler and bolsters in this pic
Look at how the bolster ends up textured from the plaiting above it
close up of the bolster
Tip of the plaited part of the belly
Binding on the bolster
Do you see the spot of leaky tar goo? This one hadn’t quite made it through the bolster
A full shot of the partially dissected snake whip
Removing the binding
Found more Tar Goo spots under the bolser
Close of how the tar leaked through the plaiting and was stopped by the bolster
Opened up shot bag
Part of the lead were moist and tarry and then right next to it were dry spots…strange!
Note I’m using gloves…I don’t know what this tar stuff exactly is and want to be safe
Unplaiting to the spot where the tar actually leaked through the overlay
Unplaiting slowly
The spot where the tar leaked through is now exposed
Just in case you wanted to see what it would look like if you were drunk.
And here it is sober
Binding removed
Looks clean on this side…
Oh wait there’s a little on the inside of the bolster
How about the other side…ah there’s the tar!
The whole shot bag is opened
And here’s the tarry lead outside of the shotbag
What was happening inside the snake whip was the tar was being formed at the core and because I plait very tightly it ran out of room in the core and had to go somewhere and that somewhere was outwards. So it found the seam in shotbag and exited there.
Next up was finding its way through the plaiting, which wasn’t a big deal because the plating is all seams. So it didn’t really stop there, it just sent straight out until it hit the bolster. Now here’s where something that I already did helped, I put my bolster’s seam 180 degrees from the seam in the core. So the direction it leaked from once it got through the belly hit the side of the bolster opposite the seam.
Unfortunately once it hit the bolster it started pooling there until there was enough of it to go all the way around the bolster and get to the seam where it finally made its exit through the plaiting where it finally emerged as the tar like substance.
Simply having my bolster seam 180 degrees from the seam of the core was almost enough to stop the leaking and in fact stopped it in several other spots on the whip. However after taking apart this snake whip I still don’t know exactly what was causing the tar to be created in the first place. I don’t know if it’s part of the natural breakdown of the lead, or environmental factors…but my money is on a combination of the two.
My next project is making an David Morgan style Indy bullwhip. It’s been a while since I’ve made one. I’m debating on making one that internally is exactly like how they make them over at David Morgan or one that just looks like a Morgan but with my internal construction.
My current project is a 12 plait snake whip made from kangaroo:
This snake whip is going to be made with the look of the bullwhip used by Indiana Jones. So it’s 12 plait in natural tan kangaroo with a checkerboard handle area and 4 seam lash. It will have the same knots as the Indy Bullwhip. That will give this the look of an Indy Bullwhip in a snake whip!
