Smooth Canadian

Brothers of Briar

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You certainly are doing a first rate job on this pipe!

You are obviously fairly skilled at woodworking already. You have many specialized tools and the vocabulary to go along with them. Perhaps you will find time to show us some of your past projects.
 
I agree with the two above comments. I would welcome a little synopsis of how you came by these skills, equipment and got to this point. Were you in a related craft?
 
Ha! I picked this up after not too much time on the net and watching videos. I consider myself a n00b, despite what you may think. I don't want anyone to get the impression I'm an expert, nor should you think this is something easily entered into.

I bought a lot of these tools one by one over the last couple years. I previously built only a couple things unrelated to pipemaking.

Also, I'm a very procedure-oriented person so a lot of these steps are just what seem to make sense to me to do next, confirmed by some of the tutorials.

I'm very humbled by all your kind comments but I'm still growing into this, temper your excitement :p
 
Oh, and no, to previous carpentry or woodworking training. The net's a great place to learn.
 
Happy Wednesday! Hope everyone on this side of the pond had a great 4th!

Now it's time I tell you why it's taken so long to finish this thing. Following the last post about the stummel shaping, I was working the shank down to match the stem and a chunk broke off of the shank accent. :cry: I removed it with a heat gun and tried to salvage the project by making another accent.

This time, though, I cracked the end of the shank when I dry fit the stem! :affraid:  :evil:  :oops:  :fpalm:

Ugh. It was not my week (last week). I set the pipe down and went to bed. This was too much. I'd have to tackle it another day....

Rather than hang up my apron and selling all my equipment, I decided to take another stab at it. I asked Jesse for some advice and he confirmed the 2 options I had: Band it with something, or, shorten the shank and make an extension. I went for the extension.

It'd have to have steel tube of course, but how to really solidify it and also be able to put more of some sort of wood on the end for a new stem mortise? I thought about it and decided I'd use briar. No worries about which wood to use that was/wasn't safe since it would still touch smoke between the end of the steel tube and the start of the stem tenon.

To prep, I drilled into the original mortise farther into the shank for the steel tube. Next I turned a spacer disc out of cumberland that would have a tenon into the original shank end and register the steel tube into the original shank mortise as well as give a full surface to epoxy the extension piece.





I was able to use a piece of briar cutoff from the same block as the stummel. After sizing it down, I rounded it out on the lathe.





Now a test fit:







Great so far. Now to epoxy it all together and let dry. Here it is after an overnight curing:



Man, it's ugly again. :face: Now, back to actually shaping the shank to match up the stem. I didn't take any pictures of this process unfortunately. It's a lot of just manually sanding/filing to fit. :roll:





I'll take a break from sanding here to refine the stem. Further filing yields this:







Time to wet sand! I took after pics since it's hard to hold a phone and wet sand the pipe. I may do some more later, but it's pretty close to being done.





Next time, the whole pipe should be completely finished! :cheers: What do you think?
 
What do I think?

I think you've found a great and practical work-around to a problem that would have caused a lesser man to abandon the project! 

Additionally it looks as though it'll be equally as cosmetically pleasing if not more so than before. Can't wait to see the final product.

That's what I think!

:sunny: 


Cheers,

RR
 
Damn man ! You're killing me !! FINISH IT !! :twisted: :twisted:
 
Oh boy, quite a turn of events. Soldier on, Brother! Looks like it's going to turn out Ok to me. Stylish even.
 
monbla256":4jfdgdwm said:
Damn man ! You're killing me !! FINISH IT !! :twisted: :twisted:
Click to expand...
You get your wish! Last night I did the rest of the wet sanding and polishing work. I'm happy with the results overall despite the tenuous situation in the middle.

Look for further views in the gallery soon! I am selling this one, but could consider doing more farther down the line.









 
 
Awesome looking pipe! I really enjoyed seeing the process you went through to make it!
 
a TOTALY NATURAL FINISHED PIPE!! now THAT'S not what I expected but it WORKS !! :twisted: :twisted: Hopefully you and the admins can put together a sticky about pipe making from your EXCELLENT photos! I thank you for taking the time and effort to graphically share with us. :cheers: :cheers:
 
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