Introduction: Whippin'! (West Country Style)

About: Hi, I'm Tim. I work on the railways during the day, run a scout troop and have a blog (see above website link) where I discuss my allotment and projects!

When you're thinking of building a 20ft high swing made of pioneering poles you want to make sure you're using good quality sisal rope which is clean cut and whipped!

Whipping is the process of binding the rope to stop it fraying.  It's very easy to do.  For this instructable you need very thin twine or whipping string and an end of sisal rope.

Sisal rope is a natural (hemp) fiber rope.

Step 1: Starting Out

I'm using a 9mm rope with a 50cm long piece of whipping twine.

The west country whipping requires two knots, one you're be familiar with when starting out tying your shoe laces.  See below image and once you've done it.  This is an overhand knot.

Step 2: Step Two Is Like Step One, Which Is Also Like Step Three

This time round you're doing the same job, just tying the same knot on the exact opposite side of the rope.  The below pic should show exactly that.  Hopefully...

Step 3: Three Is Like Step One

Keep repeating a knot on the front, then tie one on the back etc until you're almost out of twine.  It's best to work all these knots from the end of the rope down the length so that the final knot ends up away from the fraying end.

Step 4: Tying the Reef Knot!

A reef knot is easy to screw up, however I'm happy to say the below knot is definately one, not a granny, grief or theives knot.  To find more about the reef knot, check out this most informative wikipedia article

To start,  as you did in step one (and the pic in step 3) , tie an overhand knot (right end over left) then reverse the overhand to finish the reef (left over right)

You'll end up with the below!

Step 5: Finishing Up

Ease any of the knots together so it looks neat.  Then to finish off, put a dob of nail varnish on the reef knot and this will make sure that it stays tied and doesn't get as easily caught when tying the big knots!

Finish by trimming the rope, leaving enough to slightly fray which will put pressure on the whipping.

As you can see I've not nail varnished the knot yet (in a scout hall of boys, there aren't many vials of nail varnish unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it) and I've started from the bottom and finished at the top which is OK, just unlikely to be as strong.