mark":fk7yrhdy said:
Maybe the carvers could comment on any problems they ran into and how they solved them
Hey guys, I've been following the board but not posting much lately. First off, congrats to the winner! I made pipe #3, and was very impressed with the quality of the other two pipes. Fine jobs!
Now that the contest is over, here are some pics I took along the way, with brief descriptions of what I was doing.
To begin with, I bought a plateaux block kit with both a regular stem and a churchwarden stem. I know my finished pipe doesn't look like a plateux because it's not "raw" on the top, but that's mainly because I wanted the bowl to be a little shorter, so I sanded it down.
Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the raw block. I only took a picture after I'd worked on it a bit with my
drill/sanding wheel setup. This is a pic of the stummel and stem after initial sanding, and some supplies I picked up at Home Depot for the job
I wanted a nice decorative metal fitting on the end of my stummel, so the first challenge was to create that fitting myself, since I had no idea where to get them online or what they were called (I eventually found them, but forgot what they are called again, so I'd have to dig around to find them). But I DID know where to get a threaded brass pipe cap, so that's what I bought at the hardware store for a few bucks, and I hand-whittled my stummel to fit the internal diameter:
Another shot of my whittling work:
Once I got the stummel whittled down to the right size, I took the brass cap to the drill press to put a hole in it so I could fit the stem in:
And then I fitted the cap onto the stummel with gorilla glue. It threaded on nice and tight and locked into place, never to move again:
After that, I spent several days just sanding and sanding with 180, 400, and even 600 grit sandpaper until it was so smooth that it didn't even feel like wood anymore. It felt like some kind of plastic. Then I took it to the drill setup again, this time with a buffing wheel and tripoli compound, and buffed it until it was shiny. Then I bought some alcohol-based leather stain and gave it a once-over (staining my hands yellow for a week in the process!). Then heated up the stem in the oven and bent it like I wanted. I decided not to use the churchwarden stem on this pipe. Once bent, I sanded the stem the same way I sanded the pipe, with progressively finer paper and then tripoli. Then I buffed both the stem and pipe (assembled) with carnauba wax on the buffing wheel until it looked like this:
I had a number of challenges and setbacks along the way:
* I almost took off too much wood when sanding the side walls. I mentioned this in a previous post. Don't continue to sand when you're getting tired!
* I stained my hands yellow with the leather stain because I didn't wear gloves.
* At one point, when I had almost finished the buffing of the stummel, the buffing wheel yanked the stummel out of my hand and flung it down hard on the concrete garage floor. It put several gouges in the side wall, the lip, and the rounded bottom of the stummel, and I had to go all the way back to 180 grit sandpaper to work the gouges and scratches out. Keep a firm grip on the stummel when buffing!
* I mistakenly buffed the brass fitting first with tripoli, then moved on to the stummel. You know what happens when you polish brass? It turns your buffing wheel/cloth BLACK! And then that transfers to the unfinished surface of your pipe! I should have buffed the brass last. Instead, I had to toss that buffing wheel and use another one.
* Someone else already mentioned this in this thread, but if you look at the shape of the bowl, you can see I didn't sand down as far as I could have on the stem-side of the bowl. This is because I ran into a knot or something right at the bend, and the more I sanded, the more the knot opened up. I decided not to go into the wood any further in that area for fear of opening up a hole or something. I wish I had kept the stummel "thicker" so I could have stopped as soon as I noticed the knot and still had a nice shape. But I was already committed to the rest of the shape because I'd started with the bowl and sidewalls.
* I rednecked it up by using a brass plumbing fitting instead of a real smoking pipe flange or sleeve or whatever it's called. The end results were okay, but I would have rather had a nickel fitting or something that was easier to work with.
Lots of lessons learned! It was a great first pipe experience. Hope this encourages others to take on this project. I mean, if *I* can make a decent pipe out of glue and plumbing fittings and a drill, ANYONE can, trust me!
Oh, and btw, the pipe smokes great! It's a bit of a hot smoker because of the thin sidewalls, but not really any hotter than my Savinelli (which is also on the thin side).
thank you all Brothers... 
