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Listen: The Bluegrass & Old-Time ProgramGeorge "Junior" Mills hold a whip he has been using for 11 years - Okeechobee, Florida.
Image Number
Photographer
Date
Rights
Collection
Series 1640, RG 158, Folk Art Apprenticeship Program Slides, 1993-1994 ; Box 15, FF5
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Personal Subjects
Physical Description
General Note
Whip maker George "Junior" Mills of Okeechobee has been working cattle on Florida ranches - mostly in the Lake Okeechobee area, but as far north as Wildwood - since he was fourteen. He estimates that he has made more than 2,000 cow whips in sixty-one years.
Mills began teaching himself to make cow whips at fifteen, using leather from discarded boot tops. Today he painstakingly fashions whips from buckskin by first cutting the "strings" from tanned hides, then braiding several layers in a carefully controlled taper. Mills protects his finished whips by coating them with a mixture he makes by heating beef tallow, beeswax, and pine rosin together.
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