How much time do you spend on the stem?

[bornagainbriar]

I'm working on an article for pipesmagazine.com. I have a question for all you pipecrafters.

Compared to the time spent on the bowl, how much time and/or work go into making the stem? I do not necessarily mean in fitting it to the shank etc (and I know this is hard, laborious work), but just in the construction of the stem itself. From a solid piece of material, be it acrylic or ebonite or whatever - drilling, shaping, bending, finishing etc. - would you say it is 20% of the time you spend on the pipe, 30% 50% 80%???

Looking for some input. Thanks!

[jogilli]

Ok

I'll be the first to jump.. from 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes.. depends on my ability to successfully work the airhole and it's probably less that 20% of the time spent on shaping, etc... a pipes takes normally between 2 to 3 weeks.. depending on my day job, my honey-do-list, and my freetime

james

[bornagainbriar]

Thanks James. Then in the over-all total, time spent on the stem is very minimal in a percentage.

[andrew]

I'm pretty new at pipe making, but the stem can take quite a bit of time for me. It's not unusual for me to take a couple hours on a stem (depending on complexity). There's the outside work and the inside work too. It is probably 25% of the total time for the pipe (rough estimate).

[bornagainbriar]

Tank you Andrew.

[KurtHuhn]

It depends very largely on the style of stem. For a traditional billiard it's going to take far less time than an inset stem with beading or coining. But then again, a billiard takes less time overall than something that would take an inset stem.

To be honest, I never gave it much attention. You've certainly got me thinking about it though. I don't know that the next pipe I make will entail the use of a stopwatch, but I'll probably pay more attention to how much time I spend on the stem. I guess I'll have to get back to you.

(I got your PM and email - no time to reply just yet, hopefully this evening if I can stay awake)

[bornagainbriar]

It depends very largely on the style of stem. For a traditional billiard it's going to take far less time than an inset stem with beading or coining. But then again, a billiard takes less time overall than something that would take an inset stem.

This is why I was looking for a percentage kind of idea. In a billiard, sure less time, but as you so widely pointed out, you have spent less time on the bowl work as well. To be honest going itno this i had a figure in mind, but /I just wanted to see what others experience.

To be honest, I never gave it much attention. You've certainly got me thinking about it though. I don't know that the next pipe I make will entail the use of a stopwatch, but I'll probably pay more attention to how much time I spend on the stem. I guess I'll have to get back to you.

Stop watch is completely unnecessary. But on the other hand it got ME thinking... I wonder how many crafter actually do log an accurate timeline on a pipe? For the artist, time is not an issue. For the man looking to feed his family, time is critical as it has to be considered in forming a profit margin.

(I got your PM and email - no time to reply just yet, hopefully this evening if I can stay awake)

Thank you!

[wdteipen]

I can't say with a huge amount of accuracy bit I would guess somewhere around 40% of the time for me. I can drill and shape most stummels and do the finish work on a pipe rather quickly. I tend to spend a great deal of time on stems even though it's my least favorite part to do. Broken down into the various aspects of making the stem it would look roughly something like this for a typical stem:

turning an integrated tenon and fitting it to the stummel (Delrin tenons would be significantly less time but I don't use them that often): 4%
drilling the airway: 1%
rough shaping: 5%
general fine tuning/shaping: 15%
button work: 7%
cutting the slot: 4%
bending: 1%
finish sanding and buffing: 3%

Embellishments, beads, etc. would obviously take more time. Standard stems like regular tapers take much less time overall. Saddles take a bit more. Faceted stems like bulldogs take a pretty fair amount of time. Freestyle stems, which I use a pretty fair amount of, can take significantly more time also to get just right.

It's a very interesting question and I've often thought of timing myself on the different parts of making a pipe just for the sake of curiosity but it would be a tedious task and would interrupt my focus. When you're in the zone you lose track of time altogether. It would be interesting to have someone observe a pipemaker and keep track of the time breaking it down into all the different parts.

[KurtHuhn]

It's an interesting exercise. I've got a pretty good handle on my overall time to make a given pipe, but if you asked me to break it down piece by piece, I'd be at a loss for intelligent discourse.

[Sasquatch]

Yeah I don't have an answer off the top of my head either. For an ordinary pipe with no funny shaping, I'm about an hour to shape it on the lathe, have the mortise and airway cut. Then I move to cutting and fitting the stem, which in ebonite takes about a half hour for a regular non-fancy stem, probably 45 minutes with acrylic. Then what I have is a fitted up lump of crap that needs another 2 to 4 hours of fiddling, and that is both briar and stem, so I'm gonna say I'm 50/50 on stem work and stummel work.

On a stem where a guy is cutting half a dozen rings of briar and vulcanite and epoxying them etc it could be way more than that, and on a shape that's labor intensive on the stummel but possibly simple on the stem, like let's say a simple blowfish, it would be the other way around.

[bornagainbriar]

Awesome replies guys. Thanks so much for your comments.

[Charl]

Really interesting! I've never timed myself, like Wayne says, you sort of get into this zone of concentration, and loose track of time. But overall, I would (very wildly) guess that I use about 40% of the time on stems.

[bornagainbriar]

Glad to have stirred some interest in the topic. The researcher I have been doing on stems has been quite enlightening, and the resources here do not go under appreciated.

[e Markle]

You probably have all the info you need, but... here you go.

Unlike these other Cretans, I find the stem to be the most important part of the pipe.

I'd say I spend a significant amount of time on a stem. For a blasted, classic shape I spend basically the same amount of time on the stummel as I do the stem (perhaps a tad less?). On smooths it's perhaps 60-70% of the time spent on the stummel.

[JHowell]

Look up old posts and blogs by Trever Talbert. At one point he had all the time, materials, and sundries required to bring a pipe to market figured to a gnat's chuff and -- rare combination -- was willing to write about it. Better yet, interview him. He's been making a living with his mitts for years. I'd interview Rad, Bruce, Will, Love Geiger, Brian Ruthenberg, etc. Just my opinion.

[bornagainbriar]

Look up old posts and blogs by Trever Talbert. At one point he had all the time, materials, and sundries required to bring a pipe to market figured to a gnat's chuff and -- rare combination -- was willing to write about it. Better yet, interview him. He's been making a living with his mitts for years. I'd interview Rad, Bruce, Will, Love Geiger, Brian Ruthenberg, etc. Just my opinion.

Value your opinion very much. I doubt I'll be able to make contact with all of them (deadlines and all...) but I'm sure that future projects will bring that to fruition.

I value your opinions very much. There is no such thing as too much knowledge.

[Mike Messer]

This is gonna blow some minds... I keep detailed notes with time spent on each detail of each pipe I make, still it's a little difficult to extract the time spent on a particular component, but as best I can tell, I spent about 18 hours making the stem on my "Tilted Pot" pipe, and the overall hands-on time was 89 hours, so that would be about 20/80, or 20% on the stem, and 80% on everything else.
The amout of time spent is also why my prices are so high. $1500 retail / 2 = $750 wholsale, minus about $60 materials = $690 / 89 hours = $7.75 per hour for labor and overhead.

[Massis]

I'm far from an expert, but something tells me you should consider buying tools instead of gnawing away at the briar with your teeth... That might be faster.

[e Markle]

This is gonna blow some minds... I keep detailed notes with time spent on each detail of each pipe I make, still it's a little difficult to extract the time spent on a particular component, but as best I can tell, I spent about 18 hours making the stem on my "Tilted Pot" pipe, and the overall hands-on time was 89 hours, so that would be about 20/80, or 20% on the stem, and 80% on everything else.
The amout of time spent is also why my prices are so high. $1500 retail / 2 = $750 wholsale, minus about $60 materials = $690 / 89 hours = $7.75 per hour for labor and overhead.

Why?

You could outsource your pipe making to say, Rad, and he would sell you a pipe for somewhere in the $300 - $400 range, which you could turn around and sell and save your self roughly 88.5 hours. Then you could mark up the pipe by $15.50 and QUADRUPLE your hourly wage. Just a thought.

HTH

[jogilli]

One more thing I forgot to add earlier.. I went to a discussion with Rainer Barbi last year and he said he spent no more than 20 minutes on a mouthpiece.. so that is input from the late Rainer.... maybe once the participants here have spent thier life making pipes we can all get below the 1 hour mark

james