What got you interested in whips?
I first got into whips back in 2011. I was aware ever since I was little that the "crack" of a whip was created by the tip of the whip breaking the speed of sound! Since I am also a photographer, I found this quite fascinating and wanted to attempt to capture a photo of the shockwave, so I got some twine, an old drum stick and some duck tape. In about 10 minutes I had my first whip! After attempting, and unfortunately failing to capture the distorted lightwaves from the cracking whip, I became more and more interested in bullwhips all together, so I soon found myself on Youtube watching whip videos and before long, I came across the Youtube channel of perhaps one of the greatest names in whip cracking today, Adam Winrich. On Adam's channel I found a whole bunch of fantastic tutorials and whip cracking videos that really inspired me to get try to somehow get my hands on a good, quality whip and see what I could do with it. A few days later while sitting at the table of King Gyro's, I informed some of my bros about my odd pastime which I was planning on taking up soon. On hearing this, one of my friends Josiah told me that he had a brother that went through a heavy Indiana Jones phase years ago and that they still might have some his old whips from back in the day! :) This made me quite happy! Later that week he brought over the whips and he, my brother Luke, and myself had a good old time cracking whips in the driveway til at least 11:30pm that night. By now things were really starting to get awesome! I was hooked on whip cracking, cause of how much fun it was. Now that I had 3 nicely made whips I could carefully study, I decided it was time to go for round two of trying to make a whip, but this time I was going to make a good one! I found an awesome site called instructibles.com where I found the amazing instructions from one of the users there who goes by the name "ch5". He gave great explanations, and following his guide was able to make my first nylon whip. From that point on, I just kept making more, trying to make the next one better than the previous and before I knew it I had a business!
how long does it take you to make a whip?
It really all depends on the material and length. I can make a 6ft, 12 plait nylon bullwhip in about 6-8 hours where as a 12ft kangaroo hide whip can take as long as 30+ hours to make.
Are whips dangerous?
They can be, absolutely. They are really as dangerous as you make them. Just like pretty much anything else in the world, if you are careless/wreckless about how you are using them, they can cause significant damage or injury. That's why you should obviously never hit a person or animal with a whip, as one solid throw can slice very easily. Of course it is also a very good idea to where eye protection when you are learning how to use a whip.