How to Make Whips

Book excerpt: Ron Edwards was born in Australia in 1930 and brought up in the country where small farmers still plowed with horses and harvested their half acres with sickles and scythes, and larger properties relied on the annual visit of the steam-driven threshing machines. By the 1940s all this had vanished, and Edwards had realized that the country's traditional crafts also were disappearing. He began making drawings and notes of them and published these materials in his native country. How to Make Whips is the American edition of his ninth book. The first section gives instructions for a basic eight-strand whip; the second deals with the making of fine kangaroo hide whips. Other chapters explain the making of bullwhips, snake whips, and whips made from precut lace. Also included are instructions on plaiting names in whips and using plaiting designs for whip handles.