#4 thong plans

There is a small challenge in the thong. I want to make a two tone thong so I want to have brown strands to the other side and the black strands to the other. Since I want to plait the keeper first, a solid plan seems to be in order.

First: How long is the keeper? I checked my first whip and the keeper there seems to be so long that a single strand runs six times across the plait. I will go with that.



Second: How should the strands be arranged in the flat braid so that I can move to whipmaker's plait so that the colors are properly arranged? Simply put: I want to have the colors so that same color strands are parallel to each other. I also want that on the bottom of the flat braid the black strands are on the left side and on the top of the flat braid the black strands are on the right side. If the strands are arranged like this I can put the keeper on top of the belly so that the "down" side is on the front and the "up" side is on the back. Then the plaiting starts from the "up" (back) side outer strands and continues towards the middle strands. After "up" side has been plaited, plaiting continues frome the "down" (front) side outer strands that go first around the back and then join the plaiting.

Third: How long strands? I calculated that 50cm string makes about 20cm plaiting. I also add 50cm for the keeper to each strand. Strand lengths: 200cm, 300cm, 375cm, 450cm, 550cm and 550cm.

Fourth: I want two different colors to drop at a same time. Therefore I can't have 2x200cm=400cm string for the first strand pair. Besides, the keeper would mess that logic up anyway. Since the strings run from left to right and right to left in the flat 6-braid, I can pair any two black and two brown strands as long as I pair them same way for both sides. I shall use

First string: 1st and 6th strand = 750cm
Second string: 2nd and 5th strand = 850cm
Third string: 3rd and 4th strand = 825cm

Propably too much again.

Now I must make the flat 6-braid in the right spot so that after that all the strands have the desired length. Propably easy?

Belly for the fourth

For this belly I used 4 strings: 580cm, 580cm, 520cm and 400cm.

The 8-plait went for 60cm and there was 180cm (2x90) extra on the shortest string. The 6-plait went for 30cm and there was 200cm (2x100) extra on the second string. The 4-plait continued for 30cm and there was 80cm left in all the four strings after that.

This is all according my plan.





I dropped strings without plaiting them inside. This is propably a bit weaker solution, but I hope it gives smoother result and besides the weak spot will be inside the overlay and a bolster. I don't think it's going to unravel in there.

Plaiting plan

Here's the plan for my #4 whip thong. Every row is for about 10cm. This means that the first row means that for the first 10cm the core is build from 1 string and 3 chains, the belly is 8-plait and the overlay is 12-plait.


Core Belly Overlay
1+3C 8P 12P
1+3C 8P 12P
1+3C 8P 12P
1+2C 8P 12P
1+2C 8P 12P
1+2C 8P 12P
1+1C 6P 10P
1+1C 6P 10P
1+1C 6P 10P
1 4P+2 10P
1 4P 8P
1 4P 8P
1 4 8P
1 4 6P
1 3 6P
1 2 6P
1 2 4P
- 2 4P
- 1 4P
- - 4P

Chain

Hartketju was kind enough to sell me 50 meters of beaded chain for 50 euros. Since Stockmann wants 6,60e/m for the same stuff, I consider this a bargain. Now I should have chain for about 20 whips. Sounds enough...

Core for the fourth whip

Whip #4 will be a six-foot stockwhip. The core has four strands, 1', 2', 3' and 5'. The three shortest are loaded with equal lengths of chain. The 5' strand has 4' inner strands left and the last foot is coreless.

The whole thing has been twisted around itself before taping for tighter result.

The core does not taper smoothly, so that I can (hopefully) use the "drop-points" to drop strands from outer layers thus creating smoother taper for the end result. We shall see.

Another handle

Handles are nice. You get to make nice plaiting and beautiful knots. At least you can try.

For my next stockwhip handle base I chose a piece of wood 45cm long and 2cm thick. I shaped it a bit from the end so the keeper would stay more firmly. Then I burned the wood for a nice color effect.




For the plaiting I used 16 strands (8 black, 8 rust), all 50cm long. The pattern is shown below. It seems to me that 16-plait is not quite enough to cover this thick handle. I need to try 18 or 20. I nailed all the strands to the handle with small nails and taped them tightly before building the knots to cover the ends of the plaiting.



With the knots I had a lot of fun. I had several sources of information, but I think the best one was Sidney Wood's Turk's head web page that has lots of theory about knots and iterweaves. Now I understand how to make those knots and I don't have to follow some under-over-sequence that I read (or have tried to memorize). I also got Bruce Grant's Encyclopedia of Rawhide and Leather Braiding. It's got lots of knots and other cool stuff as well.





Anyway, the end knot is a brown 7-part 6-bight turk's head with black herringbone interweave. The other knots are 5-part versions of the same knot. They all seem to be a bit loose, meaning that there are spaces between strands. I may need more parts. I do not need more bights, because 6-bight knots almost slip down. Or then I just need to build my knot bases a bit smaller.



The keeper is made from 6 strands (3 black, 3 rust) that have been plaited with flat 6-plait from the middle (about 15cm). After this the keeper was tied around the handle by plaiting it with tight chessboard pattern. These strands too were nailed and taped before the ends were covered with the knot.