Around 30 inches in.

The handle.

Here's the rig I created for braiding the overlay. I had an old thick piece of wood that I actually got for the purpose of being an electric guitar body (that's what it was made for), but I never got around to it. So I drilled a hole in the end, screwed the hook in, and c-clamped it to a box.

Here are the overlay strands stretched, cut to size, and paired...

...and here they are greased and ready to go:

Comparison of the thinnest end pre and post stretched, cut down to size and paired.

And...the final overlay strands cut out. (Note, there are only 11...the far right one is twice as long).

First strand for the overlay cut out...well...technically first two. I cut my strands out for the overlay one at a time (rather than having them all connected like in the bellies), but one strand is double length and goes past the end so as to have an easy way to hang from the hook whilst plaiting. So this strand is 26' in length. It is thicker (throughout) than the final strand will be because it will need to be stretched and paired still. I won't blog every strand as I complete them.

Did some measuring and calculating for the final overlay strands widths/lengths. The radius is timesed by 1.5 and divided by 12 to get the starting width. The length is the final length x 1.5. The short of it (with some averaging) is that each strand will start at 8 mm width and drop a millimeter every 24 inches to end with 3 mm. I'll probably extend the 3 mm by an extra foot or so at the end and use strand dropping to get the final taper as I find that my strands often end up being a wee bit too short.

Added the 2nd bolster and bound it on. Due to some thickness issues I had to split the bolster for a few inches at the handle transition, and bound it quite tightly there to compensate.

Bound the 2nd belly onto the handle and then bound the torn strand back on and...

...braided the 2nd belly (after pairing and greasing the strands).

Still have to roll it and bind the handle transition up tightly.

And...broke a strand stretching...

..so I'll have to deal with that.

2nd belly strands cut out. Still needs some clean up, stretching, pairing, greasing, etc.

Cut out the first bolster...

...and bound it to the belly.

I bound it at the start of the thong to keep the handle width/thickness down.

Bound the transition from the handle to the braiding heavily.

Also, (no full pic) rolled the core (where you take a piece of something heavy-ish (I use a slab of marble) and roll the whip between it and another hard surface to smooth out the plaiting. I will roll it again before doing the next step as well, which will also smooth out the binding I did there somewhat.

1st belly plaited.

Cooked up a new batch of plaiting soap. Used the recipe on the David Morgan site: (http://www.davidmorgan.com/braiding_soap.html)

Cut out the first belly. It's 6 strands but the plait will only be 4 of the strands. 2 will be the core. After cutting it out I stretched it and paired the edges.

To avoid too much drop off where the handle ends, I added some leather to the first part of the core too. I also bound it onto the handle.

And...the hides -- 2 natural (color) of kangaroo leather. Approx 6 sq feet each.

A new whip begins.

The first three phases. An 8" bolt, grind down the threads cover the end with leather and bind it.

Welcome to the Folk Prophet Whips blog.