Freehand Experiment

[Literaryworkshop]

It all started with this ebuchon block:



The more I looked at it, the more nice figure I saw. It was relatively thick, too, much thicker than necessary for the pipes I've felt like making recently. So I decided to work against the grain a little bit.

Turn the block on its side...



And voila! It's a plateaux block. Kind of...

Drilling it was interesting, but I got it done eventually. Here's the result:













My wife says it looks like a coffee cream pitcher. Oh well...

[Jthompson1995]

Nice pipe, I think you made a good decision to turn the block so you could get the straight grain all around.

A few items I notice is that the shank seems heavy compared to the rest of the pipe and the stem is at a different angle than the shank. It makes for sort of a visual kink at the stem/shank junction. I also would like to see the stummel stained to bring out the grain even more.

I'm still very new at this so I could be totally off base as well. Very nice pipe.

[Literaryworkshop]

I mostly agree, and thanks for the comments. They help a lot. I need to get better about drilling so that the stummel and the stem flow together in one line. I think that drilling the mortise at a different angle from the air hole would help a lot. I'm going to keep working on this.

[Rodneywt1180b]

I haven't spent as much time in the gallery as maybe I should. Checking out other people's pipes and reading the comments is helping me to learn what a good pipe looks like. Thank you for posting your work here.

I like the shape of the pipe and the way you turned the block to find the best grain. I didn't notice the difference in direction on the stem and shank until it was pointed out in the comments. It's not large, but it's there. Also it looks like a flat bottom in the chamber. Is it flat? If so, how does it work compared to a rounder bottom?
Thanks,
Rodney

[Literaryworkshop]

Nope, the bottom of the chamber is rounded. It's really hard to get that to show up on a camera.

One of these days I may make a different version of this pipe that has a more consistent shape at the bottom, but I'm still got so many forms and shapes to experiment with.