Magnum Egg

[Doug535]

Been awhile since I've posted in here.
L = 8.00/20.32cm
BH = 3.22/8.18cm
BW = 1.65/4.19cm
CH = .747/1.89cm
CD = 2.60/6.60cm
WT = 3 7/8oz /111g

[UnderShade]

That’s outstanding, Doug!

[Sasquatch]

All sorts of things on that pipe look really good to me, so I'll just offer a point of thought on the design.

The height, the majesty of the bowl is reduced by the visual impact of the relatively thick stem. It's "off" to my eye. I just roughly grayed out about half of it, leaving the lines of the pipe mostly alone:




And now suddenly it's not just a really well shaped pipe, it's a lively, engaging one because the design is more holistic, if that makes any sense?

[Doug535]

Hey Sas, I can see going that direction also, but, for the sake of lighthearted argument. The idea was for you not to be able to tell from a pic how large it is without a visual aide (hence the quarter). If you go back to the first picture and visualize this being a 5 1/2" /14cm long pipe, do you still see it needing a thinner shank?

[JMG]

I think it would look better with a thinner stem like Sas depicted. Still some very nice aspects overall though.

[Sasquatch]

Hey Sas, I can see going that direction also, but, for the sake of lighthearted argument. The idea was for you not to be able to tell from a pic how large it is without a visual aide (hence the quarter). If you go back to the first picture and visualize this being a 5 1/2" /14cm long pipe, do you still see it needing a thinner shank?

I didn't even notice the quarter. I process the pipe as having been made with a short shank in order to maximize the bowl height with the briar, and the texture of the sandblast shows me more or less the scale I'm looking at (as hopefully does the button). I looked at that short shank and thought "I hate that" but then realized that wasn't true - the shank isn't the issue, it's that the stem is roughly half as thick as the bowl is wide, and so it has, in my opinion, the opposite effect as what you were hoping - it reduces the bowl rather than accentuating it, and renders the composition a little muddy because of it.

[Odissey]

In my opinion, from a purely practical point of view, this pipe has no right to exist. Well, who is able to smoke such a horse dose of tobacco at a time. The depth of the tobacco chamber is 6.6 cm - that's two doses at a time. In order to smoke it you need to have 3 - 3.5 hours of free time. With our pace of life, few people can afford such a smoke break.
At this scale, it is very difficult to grasp what the actual length of the shank is. It seems to me that it is too short. And this is a direct path to the fact that it begins to gurgle.
Again, it will not be possible to fill it tightly with tobacco, otherwise it will be simply very difficult to smoke it, the strength of the lungs will not be enough to draw in air. And with a loose packing, it will constantly stop smoldering and it will be necessary to light it up all the time.
From the point of view of design, it is perhaps acceptable. But from a practical point of view, it is very, very bad.
If you really wanted to get a pipe for a large dose of tobacco, then it is better to go by increasing the diameter of the tobacco chamber and not its height.

Regards, Odissey

[LatakiaLover]

Odissey,

Large bowled, long-smoke magnums and giants are very much a thing. There are several collectors who target nothing else and have hundreds of them, and many "regular" smokers who have one or two that are saved for special occasions. To accompany a favorite book, maybe.

Here's a specific example:
.


.

It is the same overall size as Doug's, just a different shape. Exactly the same chamber height and diameter.

It is worth several thousand dollars, and the people who collect them keep track of every one known to exist. (I'm not speculating, btw, but in the loop. The guy they send such pipes to when repair or restoration work is required.)

[Odissey]

LatakiaLover

I naturally spoke of my personal preferences, without trying to generalize.
For almost a year now, I have been devoting almost all my free time to smoking pipes. In addition to making them, I spend quite a lot of time just looking at pictures of the tubes posted on the Internet. For the first time in a year I saw a tobacco camera of this size, and sat down in surprise. Therefore, the question immediately arose - Who needs it? By projecting the question onto myself, I got the answer. I don't need it.

If I was wrong, sorry.

Thanks for the science

Best regards, Odissey

[DocAitch]

Doug,
I agree with Sas.
My sequence of thought on viewing the pipe in profile are almost exactly what his were.
Sas’ shank reduction makes it very elegant, more in line with the proportions of George’s (which is gorgeous), Dunhill. I Don’t think the size makes a difference.
DocAitch

[Sasquatch]

Re: pipe size, the most complimented chamber I make, the one that people come back to me time and time again saying "Holy shit, this thing smokes AMAZING" is 7/8" or 22mm by 2" or 50 mm tall. This is an enormous capacity chamber, and the freaky thing is, it does absolutely everything well, from delicate virginia flakes to big heaps of Pirate Kake. It takes all kinds.

[Odissey]

Here is the correct approach 22 x 50 not 19 x 66

[Sir_Saartan]

Doug I understand what you were saying with wanting the pipe to look exactly like a smaller one, just scaled up.

The thing is: we‘d try to make smaller pipes as elegant as sas is suggesting for your pipe if that left the pipes with enough strength to not break. Unfortunately that isn’t the case once your walls get too thin.

So yes: you achieved what you said you wanted to. The question is: shouldn’t you have changed the design closer to sas suggested shape?

[Doug535]

Thanks for the replies guys. As I said earlier, and maybe I didn't make it clear, I didn't want it to look like a big pipe, should have reworded it to say I didn't want the bowl height to be obvious. Yes I could have made one with a slimmed down shank and stem, but that is not what I was going for, so yes I did succeed in that respect. If another block suits a shape like this again I might consider doing a more svelte version then.

[wdteipen]

Here is an alternative that I think is a nice compromise between what Sas is saying and your goal of keeping the proportions of the pipe so that it doesn't look like a magnum pipe. Removing or undercutting the bottom side of the stem gives it a more graceful appearance while maintaining the overall proportions. My Photoshop fu is weak but you get the idea.



I also think a slight bit more bend in the stem would lend a bit more grace as well. Overall, a very well executed pipe. There's a lot to be proud of here.

[LatakiaLover]

I messed with the contrast to make the line easier to see.

Getting down to gnat's asses, here. Getting huge stems exactly right is a grueling business. But if you don't bother, what's the point, right?

After several days away from the pics I saw some excess where I didn't see it before, in the same place Wayne did.

(Imma bit concerned because Doug knows where I live... but he doesn't know my girl cat has had attack training.)

[Doug535]

Thanks gentlemen, I'll work on that bottom side. Might be a day or 2, lathe motor went south in the middle of a stem project, parts due in today, changing the old 1940s Logan over to a variable speed with a VFD. Speed changes will be a breeze now.

[Doug535]

Reworked the underside of the stem.

[LatakiaLover]

Remember, Doug... Lily is attack trained... attack trained, I say!

[Doug535]

Roger that George, I'll continue whittling.