Introducing myself + my new halloween pipe

[JonBood]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post here in this forum, as I am a new member, so I thought I will start by introducing myself.
My name is Jon and I am 27 years old. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden, but I currently have my hobby pipe making workshop at my parents farmhouse in southern Sweden.
I am really glad to have found this forum and I am certain that I will pick up (and already have picked up) a lot of new knowledge and aesthetic inspiration from here.

I also thought I would post some pictures of my latest pipe. A fire-rusticated "Halloween" pipe. This is the 8th pipe I've made so far, please judge my work. I had some problems fitting the horn stem which is why I instead made it separate, going into the shank.







Bowl material: Briar
Shank extension: Birch
Stem material: Handcut Horn
Finish: Fire-rusticated

[Growley]

Welcome Jon. I'm curious, how do you "fire rusticate" your pipes? Do you just set it on fire and then put it out, or is there a more sophisticated process? Also, does it smell burned when you're done?

[JonBood]

I found the technique on the Swedish pipe club homepage and they have a pdf there somewhere (although in Swedish) of how to do it. But the pictures speak for themselves anyway.
Basically what you do is just torch the whole surface with a burner and then polish the ash on the surface away with a nylon brush. What is left is the blast-pattern of the pipe. The fire-blast works by the same principle as the regular sand-blast, the softer parts of the wood burns away faster which creates the rustication when polished.

The Swedisg pipe club-homepage seems to be down at the moment but here is a link to the google docs cashe of the pdf:
Fire-blast, Swedish pipe club, from google docs

[JonBood]

And, no. After polishing away all the ash and applying some extra black stain and waxing it doesn't smell of ash or burned at all.

[Growley]

Thanks. Interesting look.

[Archer]

Yes! I have experience with the fire method in pens...actually love doing it! I will sometimes use a light coat of stain and light it up that way, it gets charred, and raises the grain, adds an undercoat of color, and when you knock off the char with a wire brush, it has a real nice texture to it!

[JonBood]

So you basically just add alcohol based stain and light it? I wanted to try that but my stain evaporated so fast that I didn't have time to do it! Can you get it to show off any other underlying color than black? Mine was almost pure black because of the burn so I filled in with black stain to make it complete, would be nice if there were other color possibilities though!

[Archer]

Oh no, Alcohol does burn too quick...I wished it were otherwise though! I use something like minwax stain...it burns a long time...you'll have to blow it out actually!!

So what I do if Im just going for grain I do it that way, brush off the ash to show new wood in the softer areas, and wipe new different stain over the new wood, it leaves the recessed areas black.

If I do it with rustication I tear up the wood real good, pour stain, light up, and sand semi smooth, this will leave divots in the wood which are black, with raised areas sanded to new wood...reapply color of choice and wham! You got it!

Example below!

This is a smoothy using the same technique.


This one has a little texture to it.

[JonBood]

Nice one! Always fun to learn new techniques=)
On the smooth side of my pipe I just sanded away the burn completely since the birdseyes didn't do any pattern at all and there was actually a pretty cool reddish color just at the edge of the sanding towards the burned areas.

[Archer]

How was the rest of the pipe? Did it have bad spots in the briar? If not, it had some pretty spots for sure!

[JonBood]

No it was quite ok with a little spread out straight grain, no major flaws, nothing fancy though, but I really wanted to try making a rusticated one=)