I.p., he presents : Common, “Perfected”, West Country, & Sailmaker’s whippings.
... none of which is really worth the while.
???
Why do you dismiss these whippings?
(Missing from his set is the venerable “French” version which is a
series of half-hitches.)
Budworth writes "wrap neatly and tightly", but fails to convey that "tightly" should be really tight;
if wrapped as in the images in the book, it serves little more than a napkin ring.
Of course, if one goes by the images in this (and many other such
pretty-photos knots books) book, all sorts of silly things happen!
There is in my opinion only one whipping that merits its name,
and that's the palm and needle whipping, which is also the first method
described by Brion Toss in [u][i]The Complete Rigger Wire and Rope[/i][/u].
You have quite limited yourself in skills, if that’s the case. (Well, you
deny other bindings the merit of the title “Whipping”, but don’t say
you wouldn’t employ them if lacking time & tools to do what you prefer
–point taken in that.) One certainly needs a method that works out in
the field, w/o handy tools, however that might be viewed in the grand
scheme of things re titles.
What I see of commercial-fishing gear and much other stuff is not much
whipping beyond “electrical” tape (black), which seems to work well enough.
And some of the fancier whipping often is lacking tightness. Your work,
e.g., appears what I might call “medium tight” (but I don’t have the benefit
of holding it in hand, etc.).
I tend to whip ropes using a modified Strangle knot with a sort of what
Budworth above calls “Perfected” whipping for a tail bight. I orient my
stock of whipping line with short end, stoppered for purchase, towards
the rope-to-be-whipped end, and finish the Strangle with TWO overhand
buried crossings of this end with bight of the (endless, say) material; the
I will “Perfect” whip with that bight end, hauling hard and then trimming
at the rope-end side of things --both literal whipping ends are here.
(Yes, this end-bight method requires that either the rope be short enough
to pull it all through the Perfect whipping wraps, or that those are brought
out around my store of whipping line (might be a clump of masonline or
monofil fishing line).) I have sometimes reversed this orientation (which
makes the finish easy, but the tightening of the Strangle trickier).
I haul the strangle whipping hard, and iteratively compress it in hopes
of distributing tension of wraps more evenly (it will be concentrated at
the two ends) --with pliers, or some striking object or other pounding
(this might equalize a bit simply by letting tension escape, I admit).
Attached are some photos of various whippings. Besides what I’ve just
described (look how tight the masonline & monofil is!), I use the fibrillated
strands of polyprop/ethylene twine to fashion whippings with series of
half-hitches & reverse groundline hitches; this material is relatively strong
and so flat-thin that structures with overwraps bulk hardly at all.
Sometimes I embed material through the rope/cord to help secure it
on the material against being pulled of (say in fiddling/untying knots).
I also use the constrictor and esp. the #1253 variation.
And I’ve played around with alternating half-hitches & overhands, thinking
that the each makes a better nip of the other’s feed (end) into it ; eh, this
might be more illusion (delusion) than reality, but it still seems adequate.
I once found some com-fish. quarter-inch rope that appeared to be whipped
with a constrictor --darn tight-- but it turned out to be a clove hitch with
ends further half-hitched, hauled tight.
–dl*
[edit to add …]
postscript
I should mention that the golden masonline whipping on the blue
(CoExtruded (“copolymer” --misnomer, strictly) PP/PE “Polysteel”?)
flat-fibre (5/8"?) rope was put on after the bit of extension of this
rope past the transparent monofil whipping showed itself to be
too much of a pain in impaling me or otherwise making knotting
fiddling difficult ! Rein in that stuff, give it the WHIP !
