Here’s the follow up post to the announcement about my son making his first cow whip. You’ll have to pardon me in this post as this is simply one really proud dad boasting to the world about his offspring’s accomplishments.
As you will see from the photos, Cordell did a good job on his whip. I know I’m a bit biased, but I really think his first whip looks better than some of the stuff I’ve seen on eBay lately. I made the bocote handle for him; however, you can’t deduct too many points for that because there’s lots of people who make cow whips and get their handles from other people. He would’ve tried to make the handle too, but I didn’t think he was old enough to run the lathe.
I hope what I’m seeing this week is the start of a family tradition. I’ve never pressured them to make whips, but now that my children are taking interest in it, I’m going to do all I can to encourage it. If each of my children could plait their way to a nice college fund, that would suit me just fine!
Here’s the pics:
Cordell and his finished cow whip
Cordell's Cow Whip
Cordell cracking his whip!
And not to be outdone, Cordell’s 7 year old sister is right on his heels. She too has taken an interest in plaiting. Lately, she’s been grabbing up scrap pieces of nylon and working on small plaiting projects trying to learn the various plaits. Here’s a couple of pictures of Summer and her projects:
Summer's plaiting project
(Something I just noticed about this photo… For some odd reason Summer is wearing all camoflauge. This is rather unusual because her favorite color is pink and everything she owns and wears normally has pink in it. I better save this picture!)
-Rhett
Synthetic and Supersonic 
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
[…] my son Cordell took an interest in learning how to make whips. After lots of plaiting practice, he made a whip for himself while he was still 9 years old, beating my starting age about 4 […]