Bullwhip FAQ - Making a Whip

Andrew:

On my home page there's a Real Video called Make-A-Snake in which I show how you can make a simple snake whip out of nylon braid from the hardware store. It uses only the most basic braiding and takes less than an hour to make, but will do a forward crack quite nicely.

The 1892 book Picturesque Hampden has a section on a whip manufacturer in Westfield, MA, which was the center of the 19th Century US whip industry. Start here and press the forwards arrow at the bottom of the page. Due to HTML errors on this site, at least one page is not visible using Netscape, but can be browsed using Internet Explorer. There is one surviving whip company in Westfield using 19th Century whip making equipment (see the whipmakers section.)

This article by Marlo Brown provides instructions on making a cheap (but low quality) nylon whip out of clothes line.