I've attached photos of my third completed briar pipe. After cracking the shank of another to-be-pipe in half trying to turn a tenon, I got some help from Tyler and John Crosby (thanks, guys!) who taught me some things I may have been doing wrong turning tenons. This was my first attempt at rustication, using a tool I made from Tyler's instructions here. Rusticating is not as easy as I thought! Anyway, I did not originally intend to have the bottom of the bowl extend beneath the bottom of the shank like this, but because of the way I drilled the block I could not get a nice continuous line on the underside of the pipe. So I decided to make the change in curvature look a little more deliberate, which is something I have seen (Tyler does this very well). Unfortunately when I do it it doesn't look as graceful!
Anyway, here it is. As a funny side note, I was talking with John about his use of Portuguese terms to name his pipes. Basically he said he found the Portuguese word for something that he felt the pipe resembled. So with is help I found an appropriate name for this one: testículo! Can you tell I am not a big fan of the shape of the underside of this one?
Anyway, rather than dwell on this one for two more weeks like I did with my second pipe, I decided the best approach would be to finish it, smoke it, and do a better job on the next one.
Please let me know how you think I can improve. I would really be interested in hearing from Tyler and Todd about how to pull off this type of shape (where the underside of the pipe is not one continuous curve) more gracefully.
-Scott