I am having some issues being able to log into Cowwhips.com to post updates. I am starting to accept a limited number of orders for my Florida Cow Whips.
Please email me at Rhettswhips@yahoo.com if you are interested in placing an order.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Full time EMS and plans to scale back
I went full time making whips in May 2012. It was a good run, but because of the need for medical insurance and other benefits whipmaking did not provide, I recently took a full time EMS job. With that, I’m no longer a “full time whipmaker.”
I have been running behind schedule for most of the year because of a number of situations and responsibilities that providence has brought my way. Right now I just cannot seem to make up any ground on whip orders. For those who are waiting on an order, please rest assured I will get to it as soon as possible. I work on them as much as I can when I’m not at work or working on something that has to be done here on the farm.
My plan for now is to work on the back log and toward eventually making whips as a hobby again by moving away from doing custom orders. I don’t know how long that will take, but that’s the direction I think I’d like to go now. That being stated, I will continue to accept custom orders for certain whip types for the foreseeable future. It’s just that the wait time for those will be longer as already reflected on the posted estimates at Cowwhips.com
I want to make it clear that, if you’re on my order list and reading this, you will get your whip. I am not going to leave anyone hanging.
I appreciate all the support over the years.
-Rhett
Whip Basics Ring of Trust
I am honored to be among the 1st group of whipmakers included of the Whip Basics Ring of Trust.
In the following video, Robby Amper discusses why he created the group.
Rhett’s Whip Basics Gallery
I was recently contacted by German whip coach Robby Amper and given the honor of having my own special gallery at the Whip Basics Forum. It is my own personal thread on the forum -open to the public- where I can post photos of the whips I’ve made. It has only been online for a bit over two weeks, but already had over 1100 visits as of today.
To see what all I’ve posted so far, click on the Whip Basics banner below:
Tying on a Cow Whip Handle
My method of tying on a cow whip handle. I get questions in this because it’s something I left out of my whipmaking DVD. I hope it helps.
Help us grow. Help the bees!
For a $10 contribution, you could win a new Kelley Performance Whip of your choosing!
It may seem a bit out of place to find a bee related fundraising campaign on a whip site, but I would like to share with you our 
“Help us grow. Help the Bees!” Campaign.
Honeybees today face more threats than ever. Every year beekeepers face an average loss of 30% of their colonies. We lost 25% of our colonies this year, some have lost a much larger percentage.
We often meet people who are concerned and would like to make a difference, but don’t know what to do. Perhaps they cannot keep bees themselves due to their location or just don’t have the time for a new hobby.
Kelley Honeybee Farm was founded by Rhett Kelley in 2010 with the goal of becoming a multi-generational family operated apiary. We started with just 4 colonies in our backyard and have now grown to 38. We were recently featured in a local newspaper article and met with Congressman John Barrow to discuss the issues facing us as well.
Your contributions will enable us to expand our apiary debt free and have resources available for when times come that swarms or colonies need to be rescued.
How we will use the funds if we meet the goal:
- Establish and maintain 10 brand new colonies in 2014.
- Enable us to purchase colonies from beekeepers who decide to downsize or need to reduce their number of colonies.
- Provide funding for supporting swarm and feral colony rescues.
- Purchase a portable observation hive and educational materials for use in community education projects.
- Purchase and/or refurbish equipment to support expansion and the 2014 honey harvest.
- Covered storage area for our equipment.
- Website upgrade.
- Upgrade our locally adapted queen bee rearing program.
The Impact
Your contributions will help us expand our apiary debt free instead of going to a bank or the government farm programs for funding. Your contributions will help to produce healthy bees that produce honey of the highest quality and purity as you will see when you receive the honey we send you at harvest time (U.S. donors only, but possibly other nations if regulations do not prevent the importation of our honey).
Perhaps you are one of those bee friendly people who have severe allergies to bee stings or cannot keep bees yourself for various other reasons? This is one option for you to be able to help the bee population directly. We will put your generous contribution to work for the bees in your stead.
Because we have managed to avoid debt and expand thus far in a very cost conscious manner, we will be able to make your contributions to have a bigger impact for less.
Those who sponsor us will have their name or their business/organization name posted on our sponsor page on our website.
More about Kelley Honeybee Farm
Our philosophy in beekeeping is to avoid using chemical pesticide treatments for common apiary pests. We rely upon integrated pest management techniques and organic treatments to keep problems to a minimum.
The secret is out that much of the honey sold in U.S. supermarkets is illegally sourced honey from China where many chemicals and antibiotic treatments are used that are illegal in the United States. Our honey is as natural as it gets; never adulterated or cut with corn syrup, pasteurized, or filtered like the honey you find often in grocery stores.
Associations and Affiliations:
Other ways to help:
Even if you cannot contribute, sharing our campaign with others would be a great way to help us find people who may be able to contribute.We’d even appreciate prayers for our family, this funding campaign, and for the success of our apiary.
For a $10 contribution, you could win a new Kelley Performance Whip of your choosing!
A Plea for Integrity
After you read this, please see my follow-up article as well!
I really wish I wasn’t having to write this article. But, as a whipmaker who has been selling whips online since 2001, I think there comes a time when someone has to “call a time-out” and address something that is allegedly going on within our small community.
Dishonesty in Our Midst
It has come to my attention that there’s a whipmaker selling nylon whips that is being less than honest in his product descriptions. This was discovered by someone who’s first experience with nylon was with a whip I made. The customer liked the whip and started ordering other styles from other vendors.
The customer ordered a 7ft nylon bullwhip from someone that advertised it as having 2 plaited bellies. Noticing something was amiss, the customer did what most would not, and opened it up and found that the whip had no plaited bellies at all! In fact, it contained what probably amounted to several rolls of wrapped black electrical tape!
For the record, I do not know who the offender is and I told the customer I didn’t want to know, at least for now.
I also know that the offender is apparently NOT a newbie; he’s part of the “varisity team.” I think this makes the allegations even more disappointing. I expect this sort of thing from the fly-by-nights and hucksters on eBay, but not from among the better known nylon plaiting establishment. Varsity whipmakers should have enough personal integrity to be honest in their descriptions and sell what they claim to sell. I honestly don’t have a problem with someone making whips with tape bellies, but they should describe and sell it as a wrapped tape belly -and price it accordingly! Don’t say it has “2 plaited bellies,” when in reality, it contains a dozen rolls of wrapped electrical tape!
(What I do know for certain, based on the information I received, was that it IS NOT Steve Huntress at Noreast Whips and that the whipmaker is based in the United States) [edited 10/15/2013 @ 3:24pm]
Those of us who have been around for a decade or more selling synthetic whips will recall a time when nylon was somewhat frowned upon in the whip cracking community. Many of us have worked very hard to produce the best product we can in order to get synthetic whips to the place they are today. And that’s the point, we did our best and we were honest in our dealings: that’s why we’re still around and nylon whips so widely used today!
If there are people within the whipmaking community deceiving their buyers and turning out garbage, it’s inevitably going to hurt those of us who have worked very hard to get where we are.. In fact, the customer who brought this to my attention said that if the tape-bellied bullwhip had been their first experience with nylon, she would have not bought any more synthetic whips! Think about that for a second my fellow synthetic whipmakers!
To the person who is guilty of this charge:
12 of these wrapped ≠ 2 plaited bellies
I don’t know who you are, but I realize you could be someone I know; maybe even someone I number among my friends in the whipmaking community. I sincerely hope you will make amends, or at the very least, make your descriptions match what you are really selling. You’re only going to end up hurting your own reputation as people figure out what you’re doing. You have everything to lose and nothing to gain from these deceitful practices.
You’re very lucky this customer is not willing to see you publicly thrashed. I believe you truly deserve to be called into account for this practice. I guarantee that if you continue to do this, it won’t be long before someone else finds out and exposes you. Do yourself a favor and do things right.
“You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.” -Leviticus 19: 11(ESV)
“You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God,…” Leviticus 19: 35-36 (ESV)
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,” -Colossians 3: 23 (ESV)
“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.” -Proverbs 22: 1 (ESV)
Of Refunds and Charge Backs
For a whipmaker, having a long list of orders to make is a good problem to have. It means you’ve got plenty of work to do and your name is out there and your work is in demand. Since going full time, I’ve had as many as 75 orders to make and seldom less than 40.
At times it can be a bit overwhelming. The bad part is having to tell people that you don’t have any whips in stock and they will have to wait. Worse than that is having to tell people who have been waiting that they will have to wait longer because 2013 has been so bad for your family with multiple deaths, illnesses, and hospitalizations.
Whereas I once waited to receive payment until I started making the whip, in 2012 I moved to be more in line with most other whipmakers and started requiring payment for orders up front. This move eliminated the trend I had noticed for many years in how people would order whips and then forget about it, or disappear when it was time to pay.
With that change, I made sure to update my policies to reflect that a prepaid customer is free to change or cancel their order at any time while they wait and that the customer would receive a full refund. That change has worked very well. So far, not a single prepaid customer has forgotten about their order or disappeared. I have many to change their order, and less than 5 actual cancellations.
Last night I checked my email before I went to bed, I had an email from Paypal with something I never expected: A customer who had only been on the waiting list for one month went through to credit card company for a “charge back.” He claimed his order was “unauthorized charge.” Frankly, I was quite taken aback. I saw nothing weird about the order on my end when it was placed. He even emailed me asking how long the wait would be for the whip. After that, there was no communication whatsoever. I never saw this coming.
While I suppose it is possible someone used his card to make an unauthorized charge, it certainly wasn’t me! If this guy desired to cancel the order, he was free to do so and I would have cheerfully obliged. Unless this was a legitimate case of ID theft, the way this was handled was tantamount to a landlord sending the police to collect the rent from a tenant who wasn’t even late -without ever having attempted to collect it first himself.
If the buyer in this case was legitimately defrauded by someone, he has my sympathy. If he was simply lacking in tact and common decency, I’d rather not do business with him anyway.
Fall Bullwhip Sale through Oct 5th!
Now through October 5th, all bullwhips with plaited handles are on sale with $25.00 off the base price.
- That means my popular 12 plait bullwhips are starting at just $90.00.
- My tried and true 16 plait bulls start at $120.00.
- Classic looking Nylon Indy bullwhips start at $200.00.
Please note: Standard ordering policies apply to whips ordered during this sale. All orders will placed on my order list to be built on a first come first serve basis.
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Synthetic and Supersonic 