What is the difference between a snake whip and a signal whip?
Believe it or not the answer is very simple. As you can see, a signal whip has a braided in cracker. The snake whip has a fall with an easily removable cracker the same as a bullwhip or stock whip. The reason for this is that signal whips where originally designed for dog sled racing. This is important because when the dog sled musher (the person steering the dog sled) was not using the whip he would hang it around his wrist and it would drag in the snow and ice. If they used a leather fall in the whip it would freeze up rather quickly and as soon as they cracked the whip it would more than likely break. How ever when the cracker was made out of nylon and braided in this was no longer a problem. The disadvantage is that when the cracker wears out you have to have a new one re braided in. This does take a while though because the signal whip’s cracker is usually sectioned off by knots. When the fuzzy part of the cracker wears out you simply cut off the knot and it will unravel to replac
