I have a big project in the works right now as I have been commissioned to do the 2009 club pipe for the Christian Pipe Smokers Forum. This means I have been making the same shape (a standard prince) over and over, and in doing so I have been participating in the joy/pain that is the briar lottery. In some rough shaping work I was doing yesterday, this phenomenon revealed itself in dramatic fashion.
Sometimes you win:
Sometimes you lose...badly...
*sigh*