A couple stem questions

[Ocelot55]

There is a lot of talk around here that the button on a pipe is more comfortable at .15" thick, but there is little to no talk of any other measurements. Are there good figures for how wide the bit should be, how tall the button should be, or how wide the button should be?

Do you guys pretty much standardize all your mouthpieces or do the dimensions vary based on the pipe?

I'm trying to take my hand cut stems from large chunks of rubber into something a bit more appealing. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Growley]

Here's a decent doc on that. http://www.fumeursdepipe.net/arttuyauxroan.htm

It will have to be translated though...

[Ocelot55]

That's pretty cool. Now if I only spoke French!

[Growley]

That's pretty cool. Now if I only spoke French!

Chrome translates it for me....

[the rev]

that was a great article, thanks Growley

rev

[Ocelot55]

Bing did the translation for me. My favorite translating "fail" so far:

Also, from a purely practical perspective, it is important that the opening of the lens and the channel accept the passage of a caterpillar.

Oh! Just found this one!

Many artisans with whom I spoke said that they spend up to half of the time need them to do a blowjob to cut the pipe.

[wmolaw]

Bing did the translation for me. My favorite translating "fail" so far:

Also, from a purely practical perspective, it is important that the opening of the lens and the channel accept the passage of a caterpillar.

Oh! Just found this one!

Many artisans with whom I spoke said that they spend up to half of the time need them to do a blowjob to cut the pipe.

From the sentence right before that, got me laughing my ass off! I thought, "Wow, that's one hell of an opening!"

"Also, from a purely practical, it is important that the lens aperture and canal accept the passage of a snowcat.:

[bregolad]

I've heard several people repeat Todd Johnson's advice of making the thickness behind the button less than 0.15" is the only way (not disagreeing, and it IS very comfortable), but most of the makers on that chart are at 0.16". The vast, vast majority.

That's the way Jeff Gracik taught me, and I pretty much use the same dimensions as he does, with a few little tweaks to the shape of the bit.

If you're looking for advice on what dimensions to go with, pick somebody off the chart and copy them EXACTLY. Many times. With Calipers that go the thousandth. After that you can decide if you actually like the size and shape, but the most important thing that you can do with bits is to make them exactly like you set out to make them. Know the measurements of every part of the bit, and know what your goals are. Perfect practice makes perfect.

[Tyler]

I believe Neill Roan wrote that. I bet there's a easier to read, though decidedly less humorous, version out there since Neill probably didn't write it in French.

Let me offer a thought about the evolution of pipe making that this thread brings to mind. Pipemaking has a relatively young history. Sixten, the forefather of pipe making as we practice it, quit making pipes less than two decades ago. His son is still quite active. In other words, though briar pipes certainly have more history than the one-at-a-time artisan world, it's still only measured in decades. Add to that the Internet and the corresponding explosion of communication that made available the sharing of techniques, and we find ourselves in a relatively rapidly evolving craft. While there is a lot of uniformity to the thickness behind the button in that article, I wonder if a similar exercise done with pipes coming off the same maker's benches today would yield the same dimensions? I know that for at least one maker (T. Lane) they would not. In the five years since that article, things have changed a lot for me, and I suspect others on the list as well. I now cut mine to 0.135"-ish (3.5mm) and I think they are vastly more comfortable than the dimensions in that article. It's easy to presume that pipes as we make them today have been made that way for a long time. The truth of the matter is pipes that are made to today's standard of "right" are using standards that are a few years, maybe even a few months old.

Having said all of that, a 0.160" stem is still relatively thin and comfortable compared to an unaltered preformed stem. I'm not trying to make a case for what dimension to make stems, I'm just offering some perspective for those that are relatively new to this.

[Sasquatch]

Let me take that even further, Tyler.

The actual thickness is relevant, but far more relevant for comfort and smoking purposes is the height of the button vs the thickness, and the height of the button vs the taper of the stem.

I cut reasonable bits, I've never measured one. If you put the pipe in your mouth, it should be better than your average factory-floor pipe, Peterson, Savinelli etc.

More than that, the stem and button have to function harmoniously with the shape, size, and balance of the pipe. Cutting a tiny button and a super thin stem on a Meteora Gigante full bent would be damn silly. Leaving a big chunk of rubber on the end of a 30 g group 1 straight pipe would be damn silly. So... cut the bit with some practicality and intelligence.

[andrew]

There are a few different schools of thought here. Here are two that I wrangled with for a while. One is that the customer should expect all "Andrew's" pipes to feel the same in his mouth. Sort'be a trademark type thing. The other idea is that the button dimensions should be determined be the overall pipe design. Some carvers use (i don't know if this is still the case for the one I'm thinking of) nearly fixed dimensions for their buttons, without much consideration to the pipe design. I think this is a little extreme, cause the feel of a tapered bit vs a saddle is totally different, even if the dimensions are exactly the same just behind the button, and even two tapered bits can feel totally different if he length of one is significantly different than the other. It's reasonable to keep things near to a goal of whatever you feel comfortable with, I just wouldn't get to hung up on it. Use it more as a guide than a "thou shalt". Otherwise you'll miss the forest for the trees.

[andrew]

Oh, and its easy to get a bit down to .135 or even less if you use a really tiny bit. The thing looks like a glorified sewing needle. Yes, you can still jam an extra fluffy cleaner down there. I love my fluffy cleaners! IT'S SO FLUFFY!

[caskwith]

Something you should do is talk to your customers, ask them what they think. When I first switched from pre-form to handcut I started off by using the pre-forms as my guide. I asked my customers what they thought of the stems, at first they said they were a little thick, so I thinned them down, then they said the button was a little tall and chunky so I shortened it and rounded it out. Now everyone seems to be happy for the most part (you will always get some that aren't but if they are in the minority then you can pretty much ignore/accomodate them easily enough).