Tying A Turk’s Head (tutorial by Essentia Whips)

Ok, so you’ve constructed the core of your whip, plaited the bellies, wrapped the bolsters, bindings, completed the overlay & attached a fall & cracker to your whip. All set, right? Well, not quite. Before a whip’s complete, the knot foundation & knot must be done. Tying a simple turk’s head knot is, for many, one of the most frustrating aspects of building a whip, whether nylon or leather. The process of building the knot foundation is something I’ll cover in another post very soon. So instead, I’ll put the horse before the cart, and direct you to a good source in learning to tie a turk’s head knot.

My friend from across the pond so to speak, Tony Layzell of www.essentiawhips.co.uk & www.indywhips.com, has put up a nice little tutorial on building a 7×6 turk’s head with pineapple interweave. Yep, you remember him, the guy with 2 whip websites . Anyway, Tony has this tutorial posted in a couple different places online, and was kind enough to let me post a link here to it. This tutorial shows 3 different knots, a 5×4 th, a 7×6 & 7×6 with pineapple interweave.

http://www.essentiawhips.co.uk/html/knottutorial.html

If you want a 5×4 th, just stop at picture #10. It’s one pass, so to make 2 or 3 passes, just continue with the same pattern. A 7×6 th of one pass is complete in picture #15, and with two passes in pic #18. The remaining pics illustrate very well how the interweave is done, using a red strand to follow it easily. This is a very clear & concise tutorial for showing you how to make these knots, with good pics to see exactly how they’re done. Hope this has helped some of you in lessening your frustration with tying knots.

My thanks again to Tony at Essentia Whips for allowing me to post this link. Very soon I’ll put up some pics showing how you can easily build a simple knot foundation onto which to tie your knot, and one that won’t move or wobble over time. Thanks again for reading.

~Till next time, Steve.